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SCIENCE 
AND A FUTURE LIFE 



SCIENCE AND A 
FUTURE LIFE 



BY 

JAMES H.HYSLOP,Ph.D.,LL.D. 

FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF ETHICS AND 
LOGIC IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



HERBERT B. TURNER & CO. 
BOSTON - 1905 






f^l 



Copyright, 1905, 

By Herbert B. Turner & Co. 

Entered at Stationers' Hall 

London 



Published May igoj 



1 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies rteceiveo 

MAY 24 »y05 
Copyngnt uiiry 



j 



George French Boston 



DEDICATED TO 

Dr* IRicfoarfc IHobgson 

WHOSE PATIENT AND UNREQUITED RESEARCHES FIRST 

BROUGHT ME TO THE CONCLUSIONS HERE 

DEFENDED AND FOR WHICH I WISH 

TO HOLD HIM IN GRATEFUL 
MEMORY AND AC- 
KNOWLEDGMENT 



PREFACE 

The elaborate Reports of the Society for Psychical 
Research seldom get beyond the shelves of its mem- 
bers, and it is possible that few of this class read 
them with any such care and patience as students are 
made to bestow upon Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel. I 
know one prominent member who had my own lengthy 
report on his table for six months without knowing 
what it was about. If those who profess allegiance to 
the work do no better than this what can we expect of 
the Philistines? Of course it is hard to blame any 
one for this, because this is a busy world and there 
is too much to read. But I remark the fact to indi- 
cate the difficulties in the way of interesting even the 
best minds on so intricate a subject as this. 

I have endeavored in the present volume to sum- 
marise the most important of the Society's work, 
more especially with reference to such matter as might 
claim to bear upon the problem of a future life. I 
have accepted Mr. Podmore's book on Apparitions 
and Thought Transference as sufficiently illustrative 
of supernormal phenomena not claiming to be spirit- 
istic and do not duplicate its material. I have also 
perhaps discussed the Piper Case more than does 
M. Sage in his admirable summary, because I wished 
to reach a class of English readers who may wish a 
fuller resume of the general work. The chief ques- 
tions which I wished to cover and which are not fully 

covered in M. Sage's book are found in Chapters III, 

vii 



^ 



viii SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

XII, and XIII. I have not intended that the book 
should satisfy the more exacting scientific standards, 
but serve the purpose of inducing the scientific psy- 
chologist to go to the detailed records where his de- 
mands may be better satisfied, and give the general 
reader some conception of the complexity of the prob- 
lem with which we have to deal. Hence I have only 
given samples of the facts which are accessible for the 
student, and many of the most important are too intri- 
cate to justify using the space necessary to make their 
cogency perceptible. I have, therefore, limited my- 
self to the best and the most easily intelligible type, 
and students who wish to know more must either go 
to other and more detailed records or make personal 
investigations. This work is for the reader who is 
more interested in explanation than in wearisome de- 
tails. 

The chapters summarising the Piper Case may seem 
unnecessarily long and tedious. But I could not dis- 
cuss so large a theory as the spiritistic without afford- 
ing intelligent people some idea of the amount and 
complexity of the material with which any explanatory 
theory has to contend. 

The present work is also a part of the sequel to a 
work on philosophy which is in the press and will 
appear some time later. The remaining part of the 
sequel is another Report on mediumistic phenomena 
which is ready for press but can be published only as 
a work of scientific detail. The work of which these 
are the sequel discusses the general problems of knowl- 
edge and metaphysics without any attempt to solve 
them by adducing scientific facts as proof. It con- 



PREFACE ix 

siders the proof of a future life as the desideratum 
for making a solution of metaphysical problems pos- 
sible. I mention it because I think that the question 
of the survival of personality is not an isolated prob- 
lem without philosophic associations or meaning, but 
is most fundamental to the integrity and utility of all 
philosophies. 

It is high time that investigations of this kind 
should be endowed as are many others of less impor- 
tance. There is no use to talk about the follies of 
human nature in this field, as that will be admitted and 
urged as a sufficient reason for an organised effort to 
protect men from delusion, and if any such truth as 
the conservation of personal consciousness should be 
added to the indestructibility of matter and the con- 
servation of energy we should have laid a foundation 
for the meaning of the cosmos which is not the pre- 
vailing one of scientific men. They will spend mil- 
lions in North Pole expeditions, in deep sea dredging 
for a new fish, in biological inquiries to show a pro- 
toplasmic source of life, and in astronomic observa- 
tions that lead only to speculation about planetary 
life, in short anything to throw light on man's origin, 
but not a cent to ascertain with any scientific assur- 
ance a word about his destiny. Men are quite will- 
ing under the pressure of fact to admit their origin 
from the brutes, but persist in a pride that does not 
seem compatible with that ancestry. I understand 
that a hundred thousand dollars a year are spent by 
our colleges for athletic sports, but no boast is made 
of what is spent for the solution of moral, social and 
religious problems. We are so infatuated with the 



x SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ramifications of materialism that a leading paper can 
solemnly propose the need of twenty-five millions to 
dig a well twelve miles deep merely to satisfy the 
curiosity of the geologist about the earth's strata! 
Why an investigation which promises as much protec- 
tion against illusion as it does for beliefs that are the 
only force that is capable of solving the social prob- 
lem, if soluble at all, cannot receive as much support 
as the more ridiculous efforts of men, it is hard for a 
moralist to understand. 

James H. Hyslop. 

New York. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH ... 1 



II. GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 

III. THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 

IV. HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE . . 



V. INCIDENTS FROM THE ENGLISH REPORT 134 



VI. DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT . 
VII. DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 



VIII. PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS 212 



IX. THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS . . . 
X. THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS . . . 
XL DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS . . 

XII. CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE " COMMUNI 

CATIONS" 

XIII. ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS . . 



21 

73 
113 



165 

194 



245 
267 

287 

306 
341 



XI 



SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 
CHAPTER I 

OEIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 

There was a time when it was necessary to apologize 
for the work of psychic research. It is no longer 
necessary before intelligent people. The steady in- 
fluence of time and progress has brought a certain 
type of facts in human experience into respectable 
recognition, though the hopes and expectations of 
many have not been realised. It was, of course, impos- 
sible to escape ridicule at its inception. The interest 
of the average human mind in the immortality of the 
soul, taken with the influence of scepticism and ma- 
terialism to discredit the belief, and the allegations 
that there were numerous facts proving a future life 
against belief, offered an opportunity to investigate 
the matter scientifically. But the same conditions 
also offered the knave and the adventurer a fine chance 
to prey upon the dupes that lend a ready ear to the 
marvelous. In all ages this condition has produced 
the same effect, until the mass of fraud and delusion 
was sufficient to dispossess the probability that there 
was anything else of interest to science. But in more 
respectable quarters a residuum of facts survived in 
spite of untoward circumstances and by patient and 
courageous effort the movement to investigate them 
has been justified, if only it sufficed to expose the 

1 



2 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

dangers of the human mind in the presence of illusion. 
Much of this it has done and it requires no other 
laurels for its pains. Apparently, however, it has 
opened a mine, which, if it does not supply all that 
human nature hopes, will certainly extend the bound- 
aries of knowledge. 

In the inception of the movement it was impossible, 
from the nature of many claims made by the naive 
mind, to evade the consideration of a future life and 
the alleged evidence for it. There were many alleged 
phenomena that cannot present any relevant claims to 
being evidence of such an outcome to the present, and 
hence the work might have been limited to the study 
of these obscure and perhaps dubious facts. But both 
relevant and irrelevant phenomena were so articulated 
with each other and associated with the belief in the 
existence of spirits and their influence in the physical 
world that the challenge had to be accepted and the 
issue fought out along scientific lines, whether the 
task were reputable or not. Fortunately it has per- 
formed its work with credit and commands such re- 
spect that ridicule is no longer the temper of any 
except those who have refused to investigate. The 
question of immortality, which had been relegated to 
the limbo of illusions and dreams can be discussed 
again, at least in the old philosophic manner, and 
many look hopefully to scientific method to effect what 
philosophic speculation cannot do. This fact will 
justify the present book. 

There are many influences that create and many 
that modify man's interest in a future life. It would 
require a long chapter to discuss them, and whatever 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH & 

the result it would not affect the problem before us 
at present. The one fact of importance is the gen- 
eral tenacity which the belief in immortality has had 
for so many of the human race in all periods and 
conditions of its development, and especially during 
the prevalence of Christianity. But whatever the in- 
fluences that have given rise to the belief; whatever 
the agencies that modify it; and whatever the con- 
ceptions that have incidentally become associated with 
it, there have been two main streams of tendency to 
originate the movement of psychic research whose fate 
has inevitably connected it with the problem of con- 
scious survival after death. The first of these tend- 
encies has been the destructive influence of materialism 
and scepticism. These have dominated the thinking r/ 

of the present age, perhaps, more than any other. 
The second has been the existence of a large body of 
facts which, whether false or genuine, have suggested 
to an anxious race the occurrence of at least sporadic 
communications with discarnate spirits. A brief ex- 
amination of both these influences will make quite 
intelligible the movement which was organised to 
investigate the claims of the supernormal. 

I shall examine the first of these tendencies briefly, 
namely, the growth of scepticism and materialism, 
which are the result of criticism and investigation 
within the territories of philosophy, theology, and 
physical science. Their effect is proportioned to the 
expectations which had been created by religion. 

It was the influence of Christianity that intensified 
the interest in a future life, an interest that was both 
individual and social, while its adoption of the polit- 



4 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ical methods of emperialism in the organisation of 
both civil and ecclesiastical institutions availed to con- 
vert the western world to its way of thinking. The 
doctrine of immortality was first proclaimed by it to 
the poor, that class which had been ground to pieces 
by social and political tyranny and left without hope 
by the materialism of Epicurus and his followers. 
The passion and enthusiasm with which this class 
seized the belief is evidence of the function which it 
might serve in their lives, and its association with the 
idea of human brotherhood created a leaven which 
has survived eighteen centuries of religious and polit- 
ical debauchery. At its rise civilisation was on the 
way to the grave. The outlook which had driven 
the Stoic from public life and induced the Neo-Platon- 
ists to favor ascetic habits made it appear that the 
great ideals of the race were setting in thunder clouds. 
The proclamation, therefore, of an immortal destiny 
for all, beyond the touch of pain and sorrow, humbling 
the rich and proud and exalting the poor and lowly, 
was well calculated to instill new hope and inspiration 
in personal and social morality. It actually did so, 
and the belief in immortality became the central in- 
fluence in the reconstruction of later civilisation. 
Some of the ancients accepted the doctrine, as we find 
in Pindar, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, and others, but it 
was not an idea which subordinated, as it did in Chris- 
tianity, all other conduct to itself. It took the Chris- 
tian doctrine of limited probation and eternal punish- 
ment to effect this. Greco-Roman civilisation suffered 
from the loss of the belief in its later periods, but 
much less than modern civilisation will suffer from 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 5 

this loss, because the belief had little relation to social 
morality in pagan antiquity. In Christianity, how- 
ever, the individual's interest in it was heightened by 
the character of the happiness held in prospect for 
faith, obedience, and virtue, and by the social im- 
portance ascribed to it by its relation to human 
brotherhood and the various moralities involved in that 
conception. For various reasons the belief became 
the central one in the Christian system, though after 
the stories which first occasioned the doctrine had lost 
their force the existence of God obtained the prior 
importance as a condition of guaranteeing or support- 
ing the probability of a future life on other grounds 
than the story of a resurrection, or for the purpose 
of making such a story credible. However this may 
be, political and religious agencies gave the belief in 
survival after death an interest that apparently sus- 
tained the whole integrity of our moral system and 
certainly affected the destinies of democracy. When 
the belief thus became fixed and determinative of social 
and individual morality, it is easy to see what the dis- 
turbance would be if the belief were subjected to the 
scrutiny which has dissolved so many convictions of 
the past. 

The sceptical movement affecting the belief in a 
future life began with the Renaissance, the Greco- 
Roman revival, and was unconsciously encouraged by 
the Protestant Reformation which was in fact an 
organised distrust of the authority of the church, 
though it did not at first fully realise the tendencies 
that it had turned loose. Various other influences, 
especially the rise and growth of physical science, gave 



6 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

a powerful impulse to scepticism and in a short time 
gave such an impetus to materialism that it has ever 
since governed the tendencies of nearly all scientific 
thought. The mechanical philosophy of Descartes 
and the pantheistic philosophy of Spinoza were either 
the expression or the originators of this new tendency, 
and prevailed right in the camp of the spiritualists. 
Newtonian gravitation substituted " natural " for 
" supernatural " agencies in the movements of the 
solar and stellar systems. Chemistry revealed a plas- 
tic conception of matter not dreamed of before and 
employed in its explanations internal forces as myste- 
rious as miracles in their operation and yet derobed 
of all association with the divine. Darwinian evolu- 
tion did for time what Newtonian gravitation did for 
space and so naturalised the phenomena of cosmic 
change as gravitation did that of collocation. Inven- 
tion and discovery, directed by the triumphs of phy- 
sical science, have so increased man's mastery of na- 
ture and so multiplied the conveniences and pleasures 
of living that even a Dantean or a Miltonic Paradise 
can offer only inferior attractions to our hopes and 
expectations. Men do not seek salvation in a world 
better than the present, but either feel satisfied with 
what they have accomplished or expect to realise some- 
thing better in the present than any imaginable future 
can offer them. The fascinations of a future life 
which had thrilled the hopes of those who had to con- 
sider the present as a vale of tears and a habitation 
only for sin and sorrow now appear tame and unin- 
teresting to all of us after the achievements of science 
and invention. In the religious world biblical criti- 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 7 

cism and historical studies, along with the decline of 
the belief in the " supernatural," have almost driven 
into oblivion the mediaeval conception of life and 
destiny. Inspiration and authority have either 
drifted into desuetude or survive only as poetic and 
metaphorical attempts to save fine emotion. The old 
and melancholy seriousness with which life was con- 
templated by our forefathers has been supplanted by 
a cheerful and epicurean temper with perhaps Madame 
de Maintenon's maxim about the future as a motto, 
" after us the deluge." 

But the chief among the influences that have in- 
trenched materialism until it is almost impossible to 
dislodge it has been the progress of physiology and 
psychiatry. The investigations in this field have 
shown such a relation between the organism and the 
phenomena of consciousness that it is difficult to con- 
ceive them as anything but functions of the brain and 
perishable with it. Accident and disease so disturb 
the integrity of consciousness that we can hardly im- 
agine it anything but one of the activities of the nerv- 
ous system. A fall or a blow or a disease may reduce 
the man to an unconscious condition, and some local 
injury may result in the symptoms of insanity. A 
hearty meal may end in a nightmare and intemperance 
in deliria. So dependent is normal consciousness upon 
the healthy condition of the organism that conscious- 
ness itself seems to be a function like that of digestion 
or circulation, and if it be so conceived its termination 
at death is a foregone conclusion. The fact that, 
aside from the claims of psychic research, there is no 
trace of consciousness apart from living organisms 



8 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

appears overwhelming to the average mind. Could 
we trust the evidence that an occasional traveler re- 
turns from that undiscovered country we might feel 
otherwise about the silence of the grave in most cases. 
But we are sceptical of anything that is not the com- 
mon experience of the race and in the true scientific 
spirit demand that we shall have evidence that individ- 
ual consciousness shall be found capable of existing 
independently of the organism, if we are to abandon 
the claims of materialism. But this is either wanting 
or is present in such dubious forms and quantities that 
we seem safe in questioning its real appearance at all, 
and the natural conclusions of physiology and psy- 
chiatry seem confirmed by the evidential situation of 
general experience. Philosophy is bankrupt in a con- 
dition of this kind. It has always relied upon deter- 
mining the nature of a thing in order to support its 
conclusions, and has not yet learned to study the prob- 
lem in the light of scientific facts. The older method 
of deciding the issue has thus been discredited and the 
believer is left either to his instincts and irrational 
processes for the maintenance of his convictions or to 
scepticism if he cannot apply scientific method to his 
problem. 

But just as the victory seemed to come within the 
reach of materialism faith has had her Nemesis in the 
attention which a long despised class of facts received. 
The whole history of human interest in mental phe- 
nomena had been confined to their normal manifesta- 
tions and the abnormal and unusual occurrences were 
discarded as unworthy of any consideration except 
from the medical student and from him only to be 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 9 

cured or prevented. But as science will leave no stone 
unturned in her task of discovery and has always 
found her best rewards in the investigation of residual 
phenomena, it was natural that the junction of sci- 
entific curiosity and of religious hope should be the 
organisation of psychic research. 

The phenomena that invited it were of long stand- 
ing. They were comparatively sporadic and were as 
much despised as they were sporadic. But they rep- 
resented several types of human experience that chal- 
lenged interest and investigation. They have been 
classified as apparitions, telepathy, and clairvoyance, 
not as explanations of the facts, but as names for facts 
demanding somewhat separate explanations. Per- 
haps other types of unusual phenomena are noticeable 
in the accounts of them during the history of civilisa- 
tion. But mixed with them were many phenomena 
that could not claim any more remarkable character 
than the abnormal and it was long before the claims 
of the supernormal could be distinguished from those 
of the abnormal. The facts, however, which have 
had a long history and which finally succeeded in chal- 
lenging attention were numerous. 

The first of these and perhaps the oldest is apparent 
in the witchcraft of ancient and modern times. Mixed 
up with hysteria and insanity this was probably often 
associated with phenomena of a more important char- 
acter and may have occasionally connected with what 
is now known as mediumship. Much of it was most 
probably what we should now call secondary person- 
ality or double consciousness, and probably also much 
of it insanity. But it is possible also that some of it 



10 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

contained sporadic instances of supernormal phenom- 
ena. The history of it does not seem to show clearly 
what the phenomena were, but only the kind of treat- 
ment which its victims received at the hands of church 
and state, and this in both ancient and modern 
times. 

It is probable that the ancient oracles were a class 
which we can easily recognise as a mixture of shrewd 
adventurers and genuine mediumistic persons. It is 
not now easy to decide in any case what they were. 
What has come down to us about them savors so much 
of those phenomena that represent shrewd knowledge 
of weak human nature, guessing, oracular and am- 
biguous utterances that it is almost impossible to 
suppose that anything supernormal was ever associ- 
ated with them. Fraud and illusion are the charac- 
teristics which it is most natural to attribute to them, 
and the evidence that any of them were more than this 
is so scanty and inconclusive that only experts would 
conjecture the possibility that occasional instances 
were supernormal. 

The article on Witchcraft in the Encyclopedia 
Britannica will give some idea of what occurred in 
this connection during the middle ages, and it was no 
doubt represented mainly by fraud, superstition, de- 
lusion, and insanity. The frequent laws enacted 
against it even in ages when the rulers themselves were 
superstitious attest that it must have been either fraud 
or insanity or both. From what we know in recent 
times it is probable that there were more interesting 
psychological phenomena associated with it, but it is 
quite as probable that their occurrence in credible and 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 11 

respectable quarters, as is now the fact, was concealed 
for various reasons prudential and otherwise. 

It is in modern times, however, that the evidence of 
phenomena that are more perplexing to science has 
been more abundant, and it has not been their super- 
normal character that has perplexed the scientist in 
all cases. There have been abundant phenomena that 
have no other interest than that of abnormal psychol- 
ogy whose problems are associated with the most im- 
portant issues of philanthropy as well as science. But 
before they were clearly understood they appeared to 
many as representing facts inexplicable by any or- 
dinary hypotheses. In the process of time, however, 
the claims of the supernormal have been greatly re- 
duced. The whole wide field comprises fraud, delu- 
sion, jugglery, hysteria, hallucinations, insanity, 
secondary personality, somnambulic and hypnotic 
phenomena, chance coincidence, alleged telepathy and 
clairvoyance, mediumistic phenomena, and the alleged 
movement of physical objects without contact or so- 
called telekinesis. The residual phenomena having 
any significance for the supernormal in this vast mass 
of data is perhaps comparatively small in quantity, 
but they have sufficed to invoke serious attention from 
intelligent men. They have been such as remarkable 
coincidences, apparitions of dying or deceased per- 
sons, such as Lord Brougham's experience, apparitions 
of living persons, such as those of G. J. Romanes, the 
evolutionist contemporary and friend of Charles Dar- 
win, and that of Mr. Andrew Lang, the literary critic. 
Then there is the larger class of mediumistic phenom- 
ena of which those of Mrs. Piper are a type. The 



12 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Phantasms of the Living in two volumes and the 
Cens-us of Hallucinations in one volume show hun- 
dreds of coincidental experiences and apparitions 
which have a scientific interest on any theory of them, 
and are certainly suggestive of supernormal phenom- 
ena whether they prove them or not. They are of the 
type that must have existed by the thousand before 
any attempt was made to investigate them, and there 
are evidences that they did exist in such numbers. It 
does not matter what the explanation of them is. 
They may all be due to hallucination, chance coinci- 
dence, malobservation of facts, illusions of memory 
or other natural causes. It is not their real or appar- 
ent significance for the supernormal that constitutes 
their whole value. They have a most important value 
even on the supposition that they are none of them 
supernormal. It is quite as important to prevent our 
being fooled in the interpretation of such phenomena 
as it is to prove the facts supernormal. Protection 
against illusion is as great a service to the race as the 
establishment of transcendental truths. Hence I am 
referring to the phenomena that have suggested in- 
vestigation without implying that they are necessarily 
more than the ordinary coincidences that we explain 
quite naturally. But I am also trying to indicate a 
type of facts that at least appear to be more and 
which it is quite natural for the ordinary mind to 
interpret as it does in favor of a " supernatural " 
world. 

I cannot give any elaborate account of the real 
or alleged mediumistic cases that have excited much 
speculation in the past and which have had their in- 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 13 

fluence in stimulating investigation. I must leave to 
the reader the task of looking them up. Mr. Pod- 
more's Modern Spiritualism, in two volumes, will give 
a sufficient account of very many of them, good and 
bad alike, to make any discussion of them unnecessary 
in this summary introduction. But I may refer to a 
few of the more celebrated of them very briefly. 

One of the most remarkable was Andrew Jackson 
Davis. There seems to have been no secure evidence 
of any normal dishonesty in the man, whatever we may 
think or conjecture about subconscious delinquencies. 
Much of his work, or all of it, was done in a trance 
and parts of it were carefully recorded and published. 
I do not myself see adequate evidence of anything 
supernormal in any of it, but there was certainly much 
in his experiences that challenged scientific investiga- 
tion. There was then the work of Judge Edmunds 
which represented some interesting experiments and 
experiences. No scientific man today would accept 
them as proof of the hypothesis which Mr. Edmunds 
believed, though this would not be discredited on any 
grounds of Mr. Edmunds' lack of intelligence or hon- 
esty. We simply know the phenomenon of secondary 
personality today where he did not, and we exact more 
stringent conditions for the proof of the nature of our 
phenomena than he apparently employed in what he 
reports. But with or without defects his work was 
such as should have invited investigation sooner than 
it came. Cahagnet's case was also most interesting 
and seems to have received some such attention and 
detailed records for a part of the work as similar 
instances should have obtained. His phenomena rep- 



14 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

resent alleged communications with living persons at 
a distance and also with the deceased, and perhaps 
alleged clairvoyance. Mr. Podmore thinks that some 
of the facts might have been telepathic, but I am not 
sure that it is necessary to suppose more than second- 
ary personality for the more striking incidents re- 
corded. But whatever we think of his case, there were 
undoubtedly interesting phenomena for psychology 
there, and such as certainly excuse the interpretation 
which less scientific ages gave to similar facts. I need 
hardly mention Immanuel Swedenborg, whose experi- 
ences aroused the attention of Immanuel Kant, the 
philosopher, and influenced him to write his Dreams 
of a Ghostseer and to defend the possibility of the 
spiritistic theory of such phenomena. 

But probably the most important of those which 
I wish to mention was the Rev. William Stainton 
Moses. He was educated at Oxford University and 
became a minister for some years in the Church of 
England. His health becoming affected he obtained 
a mastership at University College School. Through 
the influence of his friend, Dr. Speer, he became inter- 
ested in Spiritualism and soon developed mediumistic 
powers himself, whatever this term may mean. He 
was very sceptical of these phenomena at first, but 
finally became convinced that he was the medium of 
communication with a spirit world and gave the rest 
of his life to the cause, being for a long time editor of 
Light, the English representative of the Spiritualistic 
movement. No one has ever questioned the man's 
normal integrity and probity. He was never a pro- 
fessional medium and had scrutinised his own experi- 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 15 

ences for a long time before he yielded to the spiritis- 
tic conclusion, and this only in response to phenomena 
well calculated to tempt any mind. Some account of 
his experiences that convinced him and his friends was 
published by himself in a work entitled Spirit Iden- 
tity, and in another volume which he called Spirit 
Teachings, Illustrations of what these works repre- 
sented have been republished by the Society for Psy- 
chical Research in its Proceedings, and in the work of 
Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, entitled Human Person- 
ality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. 

The data which convinced Mr. Moses of the truth 
of Spiritualism were the result of automatic writing 
through his own hand. He kept a note book always 
present and when he felt an unaccountable impulse to 
write he took out his ever ready journal and thus kept 
a record of his experiences. Whatever we may think 
of them they are of the kind to demand the most 
patient scientific inquiry, and the man's honesty was 
so unquestioned that intelligent men, when they knew 
the facts and the manner of his receiving them, could 
not refuse them attention, though they might not 
agree with his interpretation of them. They are of 
remarkable interest to the psychologist on any theory 
whatever of their origin. 

It was the scandal of not investigating such phe- 
nomena, and especially the respectability of those ex- 
perienced by Mr. Moses and known to several leading 
men in England, that led to the founding of the So- 
ciety for Psychical Research. This was organised in 
1882 with Prof. Henry Sidgwick, of Cambridge Uni- 
versity, England, as the President. Among the Vice' 



16 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Presidents were Mr. Arthur J. Balfour, now Prime 
Minister of England ; Prof. W. F. Barrett, Professor 
of Experimental Physics in the Royal College of Sci- 
ence for Ireland ; Prof. Balfour Stewart, Professor of 
Natural Philosophy, Owens' College, Manchester ; Mr. 
Richard H. Hutton, Editor of The Spectator; Mr. 
Hensleigh Wedgwood, the brother-in-law of Charles 
Darwin, and the Rev. Stainton Moses, mentioned 
above. Among other co-operators were Mr. Frederic 
W. H. Myers, Mr. Edmund Gurney, and Mr. Frank 
Podmore. 

There soon followed in co-operation with these such 
men as Sir Oliver Lodge, F. R. S. ; Sir William 
Crookes, F. R. S. ; Prof. William James, of Harvard 
University; Prof. S. P. Langley, of the Smithsonian 
Institution, Washington, D. C. ; Lord Raleigh, the 
Marquis of Bute, the Bishop of Ripon, Dr. Milne 
Bramwell, Prof. J. J. Thompson, F. R. S. ; Prof. 
Charles Richet, of the Physiological Institute in Paris ; 
Prof. Max Dessoir, of the University of Berlin, and 
perhaps hundreds of others with similar standing in 
the scientific world. I have no space to mention more 
than those best known. 

The Council of the Society issued a prospectus in 
which it explained the object of the organisation in 
the following language: 

" It has been widely felt that the present is an op- 
portune time for making an organised and systematic 
attempt to investigate that large group of debatable 
phenomena designated by such terms as mesmeric, 
psychical, and Spiritualistic. 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 17 

" From the recorded testimony of many competent 
witnesses, past and present, including observations re- 
cently made by scientific men of eminence in various 
countries, there appears to be, amidst much illusion 
and deception, an important body of remarkable phe- 
nomena, which are prima facie inexplicable on any 
recognised hypothesis, and which, if incontestably es- 
tablished, would be of the highest value." 

Following this was a statement of the subjects en- 
trusted to special committees for investigation. They 
define the phenomena that it was intended to study : 
" 1. An examination of the nature and extent of 
any influence which may be exerted by one 
mind upon another, apart from any gener- 
ally recognised mode of perception. 
" £. The study of hypnotism, and the forms of 
so-called mesmeric trance, with its alleged 
insensibility to pain ; clairvoyance and other 
allied phenomena. 
" 3. A critical revision of Reichenbach's re- 
searches with certain organisations called 
6 sensitive,' and an inquiry whether such or- 
ganisations possess any power of perception 
beyond a highly exalted sensibility of the 
recognised sensory organs. 
" 4. A careful investigation of any reports, rest- 
ing on strong testimony, regarding appari- 
tions at the moment of death, or otherwise, 
or regarding disturbances in houses reputed 
to be haunted. 
" 5. An inquiry into the various physical phe- 



18 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

nomena commonly called Spiritualistic ; with 
an attempt to discover their causes and gen- 
eral laws. 
" 6. The collection and collation of existing ma- 
terials bearing on the history of these sub- 
jects." 
In the course of its career the Society has issued 
18 volumes of Proceedings, and 11 volumes of a Jour- 
nal. The Proceedings are occupied with reports, 
articles, and discussions on the various topics indicated 
in the prospectus and questions of allied importance, 
including methods of fraud and jugglery, coinci- 
dences, guessing, testimony, evidence, etc. The first 
attention seems to have been given to those phenomena 
which suggested " mind reading " or telepathy, as it 
was afterward called technically. The reports of ex- 
periments on this sub j ect extended through eleven vol- 
umes of the Proceedings and represent a very impres- 
sive mass of evidence favorable to the hypothesis. 
There have been various opinions in regard to its 
value, some accepting it as conclusive and others sus- 
pending judgment for further experimentation. But 
probably none can deny that the material at least 
makes out a case demanding serious attention from 
scientific men, and that, if telepathy at least is not ad- 
mitted, much more than this will have to be accepted 
to explain a part of the Society's records. 

The study of apparitions and dream coincidences 
resulted in two large volumes by Messrs. Gurney, 
Myers, and Podmore. They comprise three general 
types of phenomena, dream coincidences and waking 
coincidences that may reasonably be referred to tel- 



ORIGIN OF PSYCHIC RESEARCH 19 

epathy for an explanation, if explanation it be, and 
apparitions of living and dying persons. Appari- 
tions of persons some time deceased were excluded 
from the account, because it was the design of the 
authors to admit only those which might be explicable 
by telepathy, while those not so easily explicable 
by telepathy might be referable to other more natural 
causes. There were elaborate experiments on telep- 
athy published between the same covers in order to 
render that explanation of spontaneous coincidences 
more probable. Several able essays on hallucinations 
were also included in the work, as necessary to throw 
light upon the assumed telepathic apparitions. The 
record and discussion of phantasms of the dead were 
taken- up by Mr. Myers in the Proceedings of the 
Society. In the Proceedings also the same subject 
was occupied with a Census of Hallucinations, as it 
was called, and the conclusion of the authors was 
that the coincidental apparitions involved were not 
due to chance alone. No positive explanation was 
offered. 

The results of the Society's work have been rep- 
resented in some independent productions taken from 
its recorded material. The first of these were Ap- 
paritions and Thought Transference, and Aspects of 
Psychical Research both by Mr. Frank Podmore and 
abbreviated accounts of what is contained in the 
Society's Proceedings, The most important work, 
however, and representing the best results in the 
whole field to which the Society devoted its endeav- 
ors, was the work of Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, 
published after his death and consisting of two large 



20 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

volumes. It is entitled Human Personality and its 
Survival of Bodily Death. Much of its matter re- 
lates rather to abnormal than to supernormal psy- 
chology, so that its title conceals the width of its 
scope. It will probably prove, however, to be a more 
or less epoch-making work in its field, no matter what 
may become of its conclusions. 

Less important productions have been stimulated 
in all directions by the work of the Society. They 
cannot be mentioned here as a part of its immediate 
history, though they are the real result of the in- 
quiry. The monumental part of its work is in its 
Proceedings, a character that it will not lose even 
though the suggested conclusion never mature. They 
represent the first scientific attempt to introduce intel- 
ligent investigation into what was before no better 
than folklore. It may result in collating nothing 
more, but even if it effects nothing else it will have 
laid the basis for protecting the human mind against 
illusions and for educating it in the habit of sus- 
pending judgment until the evidence for any special 
belief is adequate, and this function is the chief 
service of science and its method. 



CHAPTER II 

GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 

It is not my purpose to discuss at any length 
the general problems and results of psychic research, 
as that is foreign to the main object of this book. 
But in order to show that there has been no pre- 
possession in the conduct of the work to bias it for 
spiritistic investigations it will be necessary to show 
that its interests extended far beyond the proof of 
any such a belief. Its original plan contemplated 
investigation into the phenomena of Spiritualism as 
this was distinctly avowed, but it had no disposition 
to accept a brief for this doctrine, though it had the 
true scientific willingness to consider its claims fairly 
and impartially. Spiritism, however, was only a part 
of its territory, and might even have been rejected if 
some of the facts that came within the purview of 
its inquiries had not made it imperative to admit the 
possibility of survival after death. It is probable 
that the society conducted its investigations in a man- 
ner and with reference to phenomena that would not 
excite any misapprehensions in regard to its intellec- 
tual tendencies. But this was a justifiable prudence 
in the face of prejudices which were quite as con- 
temptible as were supposed to characterise a bias to- 
ward Spiritualism. Besides it was a help to bridging 
a scientific chasm that the supernormal, if it existed 

at all, should first be found between living minds 

21 



22 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

instead of between the dead and the living. The 
last was by far the more difficult of the two problems, 
if not impossible. Consequently the wisest course 
was to investigate first the non-spiritistic phenomena, 
partly as a necessity of scientific method and partly 
as a judicious means for disarming criticism. 

1. Telepathy 

The first problem which the Society attacked was 
that of " telepathy " as it was later called. This 
term had to be coined after using the expression 
" thought reading " for a time to indicate the super- 
normal acquisition of knowledge by some transmis- 
sion of one person's thoughts to another. Evidently 
the organisers of the Society had happened upon some 
striking coincidences, claimed by common people to 
represent spirit communication, but which were not 
in the least evidential of this view, though they might 
indicate something unusual to science. But the very 
suspicion that such a thing as thought transference 
might be possible was a demand for experiment to 
test the matter, as experiment is the last resort of 
science in the answering of its questions. Experi- 
ment gives an opportunity to determine the conditions 
for obtaining the phenomena, at least such conditions 
as would make the facts more evidential than spon- 
taneous coincidences. Those conditions must shut 
out guessing, inference, and suggestion, to say noth- 
ing of excluding all sensory information of the or- 
dinary kind. The evidence in favor of the existence 
of thought transference, therefore, must be extraor- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 23 

dinarily protected against suspicion from the influ- 
ence of defective conditions, and in this brief account 
of the work of the Society it will have to be taken 
for granted that the experimenters, whose results 
I shall quote, were careful enough to make their 
facts suggestive at least, and any doubts about it will 
have to seek relief in the study of the detailed records. 
The first series of experiments to test the claims of 
telepathy seem very impressive from the illustrations 
given in the Society's reports. The most striking of 
their experiments consisted of various figures drawn 
by the person wishing to transmit his thought and 
of their real or attempted reproduction by the person 
who did the " thought reading." As in the parlance 
of the experimenters, we shall call the person sending 
the thought the agent and the person receiving it the 
percipient. Some care was taken to avoid the choice 
of figures familiar enough to cause coincidence from 
the chances of the guessing habit. That is to say, 
if the figures chosen should be ordinary simple geo- 
metrical figures, such as a circle or a triangle, the 
danger that the percipient would think of the same 
figure as the agent would be so great as to rob a 
coincidence of evidential significance in a theory of 
causes. This sort of precaution had to be taken 
throughout the whole system of experiments in the 
history of the Society's work, and there was even an 
experiment to show that this " guessing habit " alone 
will produce some interesting coincidences. But in 
the experiments first attempted to test the existence 
of telepathy this danger was fairly well avoided by 
more or less complications of figures and the choice 



24 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of unusual variations from familiar forms. The 
successes were very favorable to the supposition of 
telepathy. Muscle reading was undoubtedly shut 
out, and if we could eliminate entirely the scepticism 
which can base itself on the possibility of a signal 
code between the agents and percipients we could 
feel more confidence in the results. In the experi- 
ments of the first year this objection can at least be 
apparently made to their conclusiveness, though the 
committee was convinced that the agent and percip- 
ient were perfectly honest and that the conditions 
excluded the existence of a signal code. In the case 
of two of the subjects, the McCreery sisters, there was 
a later confession that they had been guilty of a 
certain amount of signalling. It is important, how- 
ever, to remember that the committee placed no value 
on any of the results in which this signalling was 
possible and that the experiments which they did 
value were such that this signalling was not possible. 
But it is important to remark in view of such cases 
that it is extremely difficult to satisfy the scientific 
man of evidence for telepathy until we have elim- 
inated all such possibilities. It is so often found that 
various motives operate in apparently the most inno- 
cent persons to play tricks and the conditions have 
to be most stringent to eliminate all sorts of conscious 
or even unconscious intimations. It would surprise 
the ordinary person to learn how simple a code of 
signals will suffice to communicate all sorts of com- 
plicated information. 

I have no reason whatever to believe that fraud of 
any kind discredited the most important of the results 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 25 

in the cases which I have been considering. But it 
is so important to be on the alert for its possibility 
that we must reckon with that contingent factor in 
making up our minds on such matters. I see no 
reason for believing in telepathy unless it can give 
credentials as unassailable as any other scientific 
truth, and the fact that the earlier experiments were 
not considered completely satisfactory even by the 
original experimenters is one that admonishes cau- 
tion as well as it vindicates the sobriety and scientific 
spirit of the committee. 

The next report by Mr. Malcolm Guthrie with 
other " subjects " is still more impressive than the 
first year's experiments. Greater precautions were 
observed against the possibility of collusion. Not 
that there was any reason to suspect it, but that the 
important point in the proof is not the honesty of 
the subjects but the impossibility of collusion between 
agent and percipient, if they are not the parties lay- 
ing claim to telepathic phenomena. Mr. Guthrie 
prescribed satisfactory conditions against signalling 
in his experiments both as regards the nature of the 
things chosen to be communicated and the variety 
of ways by which he excluded all ordinary sources of 
information. A very careful study of the whole 
of his report would show that, if fraud be suspected, 
Mr. Guthrie himself would have to bear the accusation 
and not the subjects with which he experimented. 

I shall give two illustrations of one type of experi- 
ment by Mr. Guthrie. They are not designed to 
prove, but only to illustrate the type of phenomena 
which are given to suggest telepathy as an explana- 



26 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

tion. The reader will have to go to the original 
report to examine the whole case. 

" One evening," says Mr. Guthrie, " I called Miss 
E. and a friend of mine, Mr. Lee, out of the room, 
and requested them to assist me in imagining the 
large stained glass rose-window in the transept of 
Westminster Abbey, opposite to which Miss E., Miss 
R., and I had been sitting at the service the same 
afternoon. I then asked Miss R. to say what object 
we were thinking of. After a while she said, ' I 
cannot tell what you are looking at, but I seem to 
be sitting in Westminster Abbey, where we were this 
afternoon.' After another interval she said, ' I seem 
to be looking at a window,' and again, ' I think it is 
the window in the chancel with the figures.' When 
afterwards told which window it was, she said that 
she did not see any window distinctly, and certainly 
not the rose-window thought of. 

" I next proposed another subject, and decided up- 
on something which had struck our attention in a 
lamp shop in New Bond Street, a lighted lamp with 
a stuffed monkey clinging to it — the lamp at the 
same time revolving, and the monkey moving a cocoa- 
nut, which was suspended from its foot. This exper- 
iment took a very long time and was only partially 
successful. First Miss R. said she thought of a cat 
or it might be a dog. After a while she said it was 
something long, dark, and hanging — describing the 
size and shape pretty well with her hands. Then 
she said that she saw something hanging straight 
down, and moving up and down. After the removal 
of the blindfolding, she looked at the gas chandelier, 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 27 

and said, ' Was it not that? ' and then immediately, 
' No, it was not that — it was a lamp and it was 
lighted.' Asked if the cat she saw had anything to 
do with the lamp she said ' No.' " 

The chief value of this last experiment lies in its 
approximation to the real things thought of, and 
this sort of failure or half success was a very frequent 
phenomenon in these and other trials. Their impor- 
tance lies in their evidence of subjective influences on 
the transmitted thought or images and their appar- 
ent incompatibility with any form of fraud, even 
though that be conceded as possible in the case. 

The experiments with drawn figures under very 
good test conditions showed remarkable successes, and 
failures with half successes. The percipients were 
blindfolded and the drawings made in another room 
and not in the presence of the percipient. The draw- 
ing was placed on a stand behind the percipient and a 
board placed between the percipient and the figure 
drawn. The agent sat gazing at the drawing until 
the percipient had an impression. The picture was 
then taken away and concealed, the subject's blindfold 
removed, then a reproduction of the impression made 
in drawing by the percipient. The coincidences in 
many cases are so accurate that one can hardly resist 
the conviction that telepathy is proved by them. 
Prof. Barrett reported in the same year some very 
good illustrations of similar diagrams apparently 
transmitted telepathically by other percipients alto- 
gether. 

Under similar conditions Mr. Guthrie reported the 
next year a large and complicated series of experi- 



28 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ments having much the same results as those which 
I have indicated and containing certain interesting 
characteristics like reversion and delayed percipience 
that tell decidedly in favor of the genuineness of 
the phenomena. No summary of the facts will suf- 
fice to indicate their force or value on any theory of 
them. The reader must go to the original records, 
if he wish to appreciate either side of the controversy 
in the problem. 

In the next number of the Proceedings (Vol. IV) 
Max Dessoir, of the University of Berlin, reported 
some interesting illustrations of the transfer of dia- 
grams in which he himself and two friends were the 
experimenters and without other subjects, so that the 
collusion and fraud must be attributed to them, if 
any one wishes to question the character of the re- 
sults. With dishonesty eliminated the results are 
very suggestive and are apparently far beyond any- 
thing that chance might produce. 

The next year Prof. Charles Richet, of the Physio- 
logical Institute in Paris, published in the Proceed- 
ings (Vol. V) a very long memoir of experiments, 
not only confirming the general conclusion most nat- 
ural from the experiments of Mr. Guthrie and others, 
but also contributing new evidence in support of 
thought tranference and suggesting that the faculty 
for this might be denominated " lucidite," or what 
we would perhaps call " clairvoyance " in its popular 
significance, and representing, as he claimed, mental 
processes different from our normal consciousness. I 
have no judgment to pass on this view of the condi- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 29 

tions of the alleged telepathy. The most important 
feature of his memoir is the record of diagrams in- 
volved in the experiments and that afford very impres- 
sive evidence of very unusual modes of obtaining the 
thoughts of others. 

Some careful experiments by two Frenchmen, M. 
A. Schmoll and M. J. E. Mabire, of the diagrammatic 
type are recorded and tend to confirm the same con- 
clusion. Then the next year a very long and careful 
set of experiments by Prof. Henry Sidgwick and 
Mrs. Sidgwick in cooperation with Mr. G. A. Smith 
with four different percipients while they were in the 
hypnotic trance. No satisfactory summary of these 
experiments is possible, and we must be content with 
the general conclusion of Prof. Sidgwick that chance 
was not sufficient to account for the successes. 

Baron Von Schrenk-Notzing of Munich the next 
year reported a series of experiments containing dia- 
grammatic and other illustrations of thought trans- 
ference, and Dr. A. Blair Thaw, of New York City, 
the following year reported a no less striking set of 
experiments, Mrs. Thaw generally acting as the per- 
cipient, so that outside parties with one exception, 
that of a friend, were not involved in the problem 
of evidence. In one set Dr. Thaw himself was the 
percipient and Mrs. Thaw the agent. I give a 
few illustrations of the results, but without the in- 
tention that they shall be considered as proving but 
only as confirming the natural interpretation of other 
experiments. The report is abbreviated. 

" 1st Object. Silk pincushion, in form of Orange- 



30 



SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 



Red Apple, quite round. Percipient: A Disc. 
When asked what color, said Red or Orange. When 
asked what object, named Pincushion. 

" 2nd Object. A short lead pencil, nearly covered 
by nickel cover. Never seen by percipient. Percipi- 
ent : Something white or light. A Card. I thought 
of Mr. WyaWs silver 'pencil." 

Then some experiments with colors chosen at ran- 
dom were performed after a number of successful 
trials in telling numbers: 



Chosen. 
Bright Red 
Light Green 
Yellow 

Bright Yellow 
Dark Red 
Dark Blue 
Orange 



1st Guess. 
Bright Red. 
Light Green. 
Dark Blue 
Bright Yellow. 
Blue 
Orange 
Green 



2nd Guess. 



Yellow. 

Dark Red. 
Dark Blue. 
Heliotrope. 



Whatever may be thought of these, the coinci- 
dences are very striking and suggestive, especially 
when taken collectively. 

In the Proceedings for the same year (Vol. VIII) 
Mrs. Sidgwick, wife of Prof. Henry Sidgwick of 
Cambridge University, England, and Miss Alice 
Johnson continued the experiments which have been 
mentioned above. These experiments are notable for 
their care and precautions against the objections to 
which earlier trials were exposed, especial care being 
taken to choose images that were not familiar to the 
lives of the percipients, so as to exclude the influence 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 31 

of natural guessing as much as possible. In one set 
of trials to transfer mental images there are sum- 
marised 126 experiments. The successes are more 
than 26 % , the number of wrong guesses 56 % , and the 
number in which no impression is felt more than 17 % . 
But the 126 cases are divided into two classes, those 
in which percipient and agent were in the same room 
and those in which they were not in the same room. 
In the former there were 71 experiments and in the 
latter 55. Of the 71, when agent and percipient 
were in the same room, the successes were 45.3%, the 
wrong impressions 38 % , and the instances in which 
no impression occurred 18%. Of the 55, when agent 
and percipient were not in the same room, only 4% 
were successes, just 80% wrong impressions, and 
16 % without any impression. But this mathematical 
account gives no adequate conception of the suggest- 
iveness of the coincidences because it does not reckon 
with the complexity of the incidents involved, a com- 
plex incident counting no more than a simple one, 
and all of them treated as if they represented only a 
single factor in the mental image chosen when, in 
fact, these factors were often numerous and not nec- 
essarily suggestive of each other. When viewed in 
this way the successes seem much more striking. But 
it is interesting to remark an apparent obstacle in 
distance to the supposed telepathic transmission. 

There were also recorded 107 experiments at- 
tempting to produce anaesthesia and rigidity in a 
selected finger by mental suggestion. Of these 58.8% 
were successes, 37. 4 % failures, and nearly 4 % partial 
successes. This result, however, appears more im- 



32 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

portant when you remember that the selection of the 
finger was made arbitrarily from both hands, so that 
there were ten fingers to be counted in the chances 
of success, or failure. 

There have been numerous other experiments at 
thought transference, but I shall not summarise them. 
In recent years the Society has not published many 
results of a labored kind and there seems to be no 
attempts anywhere to test the claims of the hypothe- 
sis any further. In the Phantasms of the Living 
there is a large number of spontaneous coincidences 
which certainly resemble what is claimed for telep- 
athy, at least in many instances, and they may have 
their weight. But they can never be so evidential as 
experimental incidents, and we cannot easily deter- 
mine the mental setting in which they occur. The 
observers are not always persons with a scientific 
training, and in the course of time memory is likely 
to play havoc with the incidents which it is necessary 
to know in order to estimate the facts at their right 
value. At the same time, there are so many inci- 
dents well attested and corroborated by independent 
testimony that they certainly seem to indicate a 
causal nexus of some kind in the coincidences re- 
corded, whatever we may choose to regard this causal 
influence. 

This brief summary of the data supposed to in- 
dicate the existence of telepathy can, of course, give 
no idea of its weight or value, or whether it is to 
have any or not. I have tried only to give some 
conception of the care with which the hypothesis has 
been tested, and if the scientific man feels that I have 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 33 

done this too favorably I can only refer him to the 
original records and their details for the correction 
of this real or apparent overestimation on my part. 
One thing can be said of the experiments that can- 
not be questioned. They were as carefully performed 
as any scientific man could have made them at that 
time. Many of them were instrumental in the dis- 
covery of delicate influences on the mind that were 
not previously suggested to psychology. The proc- 
ess of protecting experimentation against difficul- 
ties and objections to telepathic transmission was one 
of gradual growth, and in spite of early defects in 
evidential experiments there are none which have not 
presented valuable contributions to human knowl- 
edge. 

It is probable that men will differ in regard to the 
force of the Society's evidence in favor of telepathy. 
Some will ridicule it without examination, perhaps 
more especially physicists who have been accustomed 
to deal with experiments where, if success is attained 
at all, it will be so uniform and so easily confirmed 
by others that there will be no doubt of the result. 
This class of critics and objectors can be neglected. 
Some after reading the evidence will probably say 
not proven, and concentrate objections on failures 
and the mathematical interpretation of the phenom- 
ena. They may be right, and I shall not dogmatise 
against this claim, though I think that it would 
not be hastily made where there were no prejudices 
to influence the student. Some will admit the force of 
the evidence and suspend judgment until more facts 
are forthcoming. But I think that the fairminded 



34 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

reader of the records who studies them patiently, as 
he would any other record of scientific facts, would 
admit, with Prof. Stout of St. Andrew's University, 
that at least a good case had been made out 
for further investigation, and it is quite pos- 
sible that he would also be at a loss to dis- 
credit the man who thinks telepathy proved, by 
anything except the resolution to suspend judg- 
ment for more evidence. As for myself, I have had 
very little personal evidence in favor of telepathy. In 
one case I obtained three successes with diagrams in 
three experiments, and the diagrams were too compli- 
cated to be guessed. They by no means proved any- 
thing telepathic to me, but they certainly induced 
me to respect the more elaborate experiments of the 
Society for Psychical Research. 

Considering, however, that telepathy has either 
been proved or justified as a possible hypothesis, 
there is one thing regarding it that is certain, and 
this is that the conception has been very much mis- 
understood, both by psychic researchers who have 
used it too freely and by the general public which 
has never appreciated the limitations under which 
it was at first supposed. Those who adopted the 
term as a synonym of thought transference carefully 
defined it and indicated, implicitly or explicitly, the 
limitations under which the process was supposed. It 
was defined explicitly as " the communication of im- 
pressions of any kind from one mind to another, 
independently of the recognized channels of sense." 
At the same time that it was defined in this manner 
the conception was implicitly limited to coincidences 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 35 

between the present active mental states of the agent 
and the received impressions of the percipient at the 
same time. A few instances of deferred percipience 
occurred that might suggest the supposition that the 
telepathic access was a subliminal affair for both 
agent and percipient. But as this deferred percip- 
ience was not the rule and as they might be cases of 
delayed reproduction, like the difficulty of recalling 
a forgotten word, there is not sufficient evidence to 
suppose it a subliminal affair involving supernormal 
access to the memory of the agent. All but a very 
few instances of the evidence confine the process to 
coincidences between present active states of con- 
sciousness, and this suffices to determine the limits 
of the process as a scientific hypothesis, if it is to be 
tolerated at all. 

But in spite of what is implied in the definition of 
it and of the facts that have been collected as evidence 
for it, the public generally and many psychical re- 
searchers employ the term to denote a process which 
may not involve the effect of the present state of an 
agent upon a percipient, but which may represent 
the percipient's own unstimulated access to anything 
that has been in the mind of the agent in the past. 
It is even extended by some persons to this omniscient 
access of any percipient to the mind and memory of 
any living person at any time desired. It suffices to 
say that there is not a particle of scientific or any 
other warrant for such a process. On the evidential 
side such an hypothesis is sheer nonsense, and I do 
not think that any one would be tempted by it except 
as a means of giving trouble to those who believe 



36 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

in the existence of discarnate spirits. It should be 
remembered that the scientific world generally has 
not yet accepted telepathy of any sort, to say noth- 
ing of this omniscient thought reading which is ap- 
parently without analogy of any kind in physical and 
mental phenomena. It is certain that there is no 
scientific excuse for this extension of the term, even 
though we do not know the laws of the assumed tele- 
pathic action. We may ask the question, if telep- 
athy of any kind is possible, whether it might not 
possibly extend to the memory of agents, but asking 
this question, in the absence of known limits for the 
process, is not answering it, nor is the legitimacy of 
such a question a reason for supposing that any such 
telepathy is a fact supported by evidence, because all 
the evidence that can claim to prove telepathy of 
any kind limits it to the present active states of the 
mind, and the assumption of anything else is either 
gratuitous and unsupported or can be only assumed 
as a precaution against hasty conclusions in favor 
of some other theory that is not so respectable. It is 
not imperative that we should deny the possibility 
of such a telepathy, as we must reserve judgment for 
any facts that advocates of this extension of the 
process may bring forward. But there is absolutely 
nothing but the imagination at present in support 
of such a claim as this omniscient thought reading. 
When it is so hard to prove the occasional trans- 
mission of a present mental state we are certainly not 
justified in using the telepathic hypothesis to ex- 
plain every coincidence of ideas that occurs between 
a percipient and some other living person in the 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 37 

world, whether the thought be a present or a past one, 
unless we produce evidence in some proportion with 
the claims made. 

There is also much misunderstanding in regard 
to the explanatory nature of telepathy. There is a 
strong tendency on the part of the layman to sup- 
pose that telepathy is an explanation of the phe- 
nomena which have been adduced to prove it as a 
fact, and psychic researchers have consciously or un- 
consciously lent their support to this conception of 
it. But we should not forget that the term was em- 
ployed in the first place, not to explain the phe- 
nomena really or apparently proving it, not as a 
name for the cause of the phenomena, but only as a 
name for an exceptional type of facts which require 
a cause. In other words, it was only a name for 
coincidences which were not due to chance, but which 
had some cause for them, and hence served only to 
determine their classification outside the well-known 
and understood phenomena of science. What its 
modus operandi, mode of action, is we do not know, 
even supposing that we have a right to accept the 
existence of it as a supernormal fact. A certain class 
of people assume that it is effected through the me- 
diation of vibrations of some kind, whether ethereal 
or otherwise. This may be a fact, but I do not know 
a shred of evidence to support such a conviction, ex- 
cept the habits of physicists in their explanation of 
everything by modes of motion, and that is, in fact, 
not evidence, but is attempted explanation, and one 
wonders how an appeal to modes of motion can ex- 
plain anything until we can see in the phenomenon 



38 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

something of the characteristics which are involved 
in its relation to such a supposed cause. But, admit- 
ting the right of such a conjecture and of trying 
to make the phenomena of telepathy consistent with 
the universal explication of physical events, an ef- 
fort quite legitimate in the light of the hypothesis 
that nature is uniform and representative of some 
kind of unity, the first thing to do in supposing a 
motional nexus between agent and percipient in the 
process of telepathy is to find evidence that con- 
sciousness is a mode of motion. Whatever it may be, 
there is certainly no tangible evidence that mental 
action is a mode of motion, and until we can render 
this assumption of its vibratory nature probable we 
must use the term telepathy only to denote a coin- 
cidence that involves a causal nexus and without any 
implication that we know what this nexus is. In prov- 
ing it we are only establishing a fact, not explaining 
the process. 

It is true, however, that there is something about 
the conception of telepathy which excuses the tend- 
ency to appeal to it as a cause. It explams away 
the previously alleged cause of certain phenomena. 
There has been a long prevalent habit of appealing 
to spirits to explain every unusual fact that came un- 
der observation, often without any inquiry into the 
simple and natural character of the event, and more 
especially all instances in which knowledge was sup- 
posed to have been acquired in an exceptional way. 
What telepathy has done in such situations is to ex- 
clude the application of spirits and to imply that 
the process, even though it involves something inde- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 39 

pendent of the percipient's mind, does not require us 
to suppose that the intermediating agent is a spirit. 
Its ground for this is that the facts to which telep- 
athy may apply are not evidence of discarnate ac- 
tion, even though they actually be effected by them. 
Science will not tolerate the assumption of spirits 
unless the facts necessitate that explanation in pref- 
erence to any other, and the facts described by telep- 
athy are not such as prove the personal identity of 
deceased persons, whatever agency they might be 
supposed to have in producing them. In thus ex- 
plaining away the supposed significance of the phe- 
nomena it is an easy step to suppose that the phe- 
nomena are positively explained by the process, when 
in fact they are not so explained, but remain as a 
problem for further inquiry as to causes. But the 
man who supposes that the phenomena are explained 
when he finds that there is some causal nexus in te- 
lepathy commits the obverse error of the man who ap- 
peals to spirits as the cause. It is no proof that 
we have found a cause of phenomena when we have 
found what is not their cause, and all that telepathy 
does in phenomena to which it is applicable at all is 
to indicate that the process is a direct one between two 
living minds and that, from the want of a character 
expected from any other source, they must originate 
within and not without the living. But telepathy 
does not explain even the phenomena to which it ap- 
plies as a name describing their supernormal char- 
acter, to say nothing of the kind of phenomena to 
which it does not apply. As indicated above, the 
evidence for it as a supernormal fact is confined to 



40 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

the present active consciousness of an agent supposed 
to affect a percipient, and there is not the slightest 
scientific reason for applying it to any other phenom- 
ena as a mode of reducing them to the intelligible. 
Hence telepathy only limits our problem, and does 
not solve it, though it excludes, where it is applicable 
at all, the right to invoke transcendental agencies of 
a personal kind. 

I have found these remarks necessary in order to 
explain the position which science must take in re- 
gard to telepathy, after it has admitted it, and it is 
to be remembered that the scientific world generally 
is not yet prepared to accept it in any form. More- 
over, I have wished to insist that there is no ade- 
quate excuse for the wholesale application of the idea 
to explain every remarkable mental phenomenon we 
encounter. There must be as much sobriety and cau- 
tion in applying the idea of telepathy as there has 
been in accepting it as a fact, while as a fact there 
has been too little tendency to respect this canon of 
intelligence. If telepathy is a fact we must discover 
its laws and conditions as a justification of applying 
it to phenomena which do not prove it. At present 
it can apply to nothing but coincidences of the active 
type between minds, and it must not be confused with 
the cause of them or the mode of transmission that 
may be conceived as possible. 

My own personal attitude, therefore, is that there 
is at present satisfactory evidence in favor of spo- 
radic instances of an unusual phenomenon involving 
an exceptional causal nexus between the thoughts of 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 41 

one person, the agent, and another, the percipient. 
How it is effected I do not know ; nor do I know any- 
thing about its laws and conditions. What it means 
is still to me a problem and it may long remain a 
problem. Many real or alleged facts which are 
claimed to be telepathic I do not believe are either 
evidence for it or to be explained by it. Many of the 
instances quoted in the Phantasms of the Living, it 
seems to me, are not adequately explained by telep- 
athy and are certainly not evidence of it. Telepathic 
phenomena may be involved in them as a part of the 
process affecting them, but it seems to me that we 
have still to determine their true causes, while telep- 
athy must be for me a tentative theory of them in 
lieu of anything better, and a little understood theory 
of more evidential coincidences that are the result of 
experiment and spontaneous occurrences. I, there- 
fore, hold to telepathy as a suitable explanation, if 
such we may call it, of phenomena that cannot lay 
claim to any transcendental origin of a spiritual kind 
and that represent a supernormal relation between 
living minds. That is as far as I can go, and I shall 
revise that opinion when it can be shown to be un- 
scientific. 

2. Apparitions 

One of the Society's professed objects was to in- 
vestigate the alleged phenomena of Spiritualism, and 
it included in its scope of them all that the advocates 
of that doctrine had claimed. This plan, of course, 
brought it into contact with the frauds of that sub- 



42 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ject as well as cases that at least superficially 
presented better credentials. Much that was 
undoubtedly not of the fraudulent type represented 
abnormal psychology or bad science, and was accord- 
ingly relegated to secondary personality, unconscious 
muscular action, misunderstanding of the phenom- 
ena, illusion, and hallucinations which science could 
not question. But there was one class of facts which 
had an apparent significance for the spiritualistic 
theory, and, if they were what they claimed to be evi- 
dentially, offered the most promising prospect of sup- 
porting the existence of discarnate spirits, if that 
doctrine could obtain any support at all from phe- 
nomena that were not the result of experiment. These 
were the phenomena of apparitions of deceased per- 
sons. 

Ghost stories have been from time immemorial the 
delight and the fear of the race ; the delight of those 
who would seek to prove by supposed genuine ones the 
survival of man after death and of those who love to 
ridicule superstition, and the fear of those who imag- 
ine that spiritual agencies mix in the affairs of life for 
some form of evil. Illusion and hallucination account 
for so much that the more intelligent, whether they 
were moved to ridicule such experiences or to accept 
them as facts though unreal, have been obliged to dis- 
credit the claims so often founded upon them. But 
their constancy in the experience of all races in all 
stages of human culture has been so prominent a fact 
that Mr. Herbert Spencer traces, not only the belief in 
a future life to them, but also the origin of religion. 
He is also so much impressed with their influence 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 43 

upon ideas and institutions that he gives them an im- 
portant place among the forces that determine the 
data of Sociology, I shall not dwell upon that fact, 
except to insist that, whatever we may think of their 
real nature, they have a scientifically serious import 
for the study of man, and Mr. Spencer will not be 
accused of superstitious sympathies in recognising 
that importance. I can only refer readers to his So- 
ciology for some interesting information upon the 
subject, and the same will be found in any discus- 
sion of primitive culture. 

I remark this aspect of them and their influence on 
human belief and action because I wish to bespeak 
for such phenomena a value wholly apart from their 
supposed objective truth and reality. I do not con- 
sider that the value of scientific study is limited to 
the investigation of merely what can be proved to be 
real, and that conviction can be doubly reinforced by 
all the work of psychiatry, the study of folk-lore, and 
the study of literature and philosophy. Psychiatry 
and abnormal psychology have ostensibly occupied 
themselves with unrealities, except as they were sub- 
jective facts, and have prided themselves on their su- 
preme value to the knowledge and protection of man. 
If apparitions have been so persistent a phenomenon in 
human experience and if they have actually influenced 
human beliefs and customs, even to a small part of 
the extent asserted of them by men like Mr. Spencer, 
there is no reason for taking an attitude of contempt 
when some one proposes to ascertain, if possible, why 
they persist; except as a preservation of one's sense 
of humor and respectability in the estimation of per- 



44 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

sons otherwise intelligent. If we should happen in 
the investigation to find that they have a wider and 
deeper meaning than the scoffer has supposed with- 
out adequate investigation, the existing body of hu- 
man knowledge will not be disgraced. 

The fact is that the contempt for the study of ap- 
paritions has various motives that may represent a 
perfectly healthy state of mind. Some of us find 
after investigation that the prevalent opinion of in- 
telligent men has so much to support it that it will 
appear a vain effort to revive any other serious inter- 
est in them than in illusions and hallucinations. Some 
of us cannot accept their attestation of a future life 
without fearing a revival of all those intellectual 
crazes which have diverted human energies into the 
most maudlin of philosophies. Some of us have to 
affect ridicule of the phenomena to protect our re- 
spectability while we secretly or publicly recognise 
the serious and important side of their investigation. 
I do not know any man who has maintained this bal- 
ance between humor and seriousness better than Mr. 
Andrew Lang, and he has admitted that he thinks 
Mr. Myers actually proved the possibility that they 
evince sufficient evidence of a future life. Reviewing 
Mr. Myers' work on Human Personality and its Sur- 
vival of Bodily Death and referring to additional 
phenomena of the same kind in Phantasms of the Liv- 
ing, Mr. Lang says: 

" To myself, after reading the evidence, it appears 
that a fairly strong presumption is raised in favor of 
a ' phantasmogenetic agency ' set at work, in a vague 
unconscious way, by the deceased, and I say this after 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 45 

considering the adverse arguments of Mr. Podmore, 
for example, in favor of telepathy from living minds, 
and all the hypotheses of hoaxing, exaggerative mem- 
ory, mal-observation, and so forth — not to mention 
the popular nonsense that * What is the use of it ? ' 
' Was it permitted ? ' What is the use of argon? 
Why are cockroaches permitted? 

" To end with a confession of opinion : I entirely 
agree with Mr. Myers and Hegel, that we, or many 
of us, are in something, or that something is in us, 
which c does not know the bonds of time, or feel the 
manacles of space.' " 

Personal interest in a future life is so intense and 
the consequences of being fooled both in our evidence 
of it and in our ideas of it on any such evidence as 
is obtainable, that we do well to be cautious about 
accepting it on the testimony of apparitions. The 
neglect of them, therefore, may have its justi- 
fication for many of us, but the scientific man 
cannot plead any dangers to his own temper 
of mind as an excuse for leaving them unin- 
vestigated, as any outcome must add to his 
power and usefulness, whether they add to the 
triumphs of psychiatry or prove the immortality of 
the soul. 

Now an apparition is the sensory appearance of a 
reality, animal or human, which turns out on exam- 
ination not to be the physical being that it seems to 
be. To find out what the frequency of apparitions 
might be and to ascertain how seriously science might 
be required to treat them as significant of objective 
causes, the Society for Psychical Research addressed 



46 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

an inquiry to the public for an account of experiences 
having psychological interest and importance. 
Among the replies involving waking and dream coin- 
cidences were a large number of coincidental appari- 
tions. It was found that these last could be arranged 
for convenience in three classes. (1) Apparitions of 
persons known or proved to be living at the time. 
(2) Apparitions of persons in or about the crisis of 
death. (3) Apparitions of persons some time de- 
ceased. The obvious purpose of this division was to 
emphasise the very different conditions under which 
a common or similar phenomenon occurred. The im- 
portance of this consideration will be apparent when 
we come to theories of explanation. But while the 
classification served as a means of distinguishing dif- 
ferent conditions with the same general phenomenon, 
it also served to suggest explanations not consistent 
with the spiritistic interpretation of the phenomena, 
as they had been viewed for ages. I shall give some 
well authenticated instances of them without regard 
to the class into which they fall. They shall repre- 
sent suggestive coincidences at the same time "and a 
type that apparently cannot be classified with the or- 
dinary phenomena of illusion and hallucination. Due 
allowance was made by the committee that collected 
them for that enormously numerous class of expe- 
riences that belong only to abnormal psychology and 
which have a purely subjective origin without any 
possible doubt of the fact. Its collection of cases 
was designed to represent the type that at least 
seemed to have an objective source. I shall men- 
tion no instance of an apparition that does not come 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 47 

from an authority which will carry weight at least 
in regard to the occurrence of the experience and of 
details that suggest a scientific interest beyond the 
ordinary, or that was not authenticated by sufficient 
testimony to exempt it from the clear suspicion of 
ordinary illusion, whatever the final explanation. 

The first instance that I shall quote is that of Lord 
Brougham, who, as every one must recognise, was 
thoroughly a man of the world. He was travelling 
with friends in Sweden when the experience occurred: 

" We set out for Gothenberg determined to make 
Norway. About one in the morning, arriving at a 
decent inn, we decided to stop for the night. Tired 
with the cold of yesterday, I was glad to take advan- 
tage of a hot bath before I turned in, and here a 
most remarkable thing happened to me — so remark- 
able that I must tell the story from the beginning. 

" After I left the high school, I went with G., my 
first intimate friend, to attend the classes in the uni- 
versity. There was no divinity class, but we fre- 
quently in our walks discussed and speculated upon 
many grave subjects — among others on the immortal- 
ity of the soul, and on a future state. This question, 
and the possibility, I will not say of ghosts walking, 
but of the dead appearing to the living, were subjects 
of much speculation; and we actually committed the 
folly of drawing up an agreement, written with our 
own blood, to the effect that whichever of us died the 
first should appear to the other, and thus solve the 
doubts we had entertained of the 6 life after death.' 

" After we had finished our classes at the college, 
G. went to India, having got an appointment there 



48 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

in the civil service. He seldom wrote to me, and after 
the lapse of a few years I had almost forgotten him ; 
moreover his family having little connection with 
Edinburgh, I seldom saw or heard anything of them, 
so that all his schoolboy intimacy had died out and I 
had nearly forgotten his existence. I had taken, as I 
have said, a warm bath, and while lying in it and en- 
joying the comfort of the heat after the late freezing 
I had undergone, I turned my head around, looking 
toward the chair on which I had deposited my clothes, 
as I was about to get out of the bath. On the chair 
sat G., looking calmly at me. How I got out of the 
bath I know not, but on recovering my senses I found 
myself sprawling on the floor. The apparition, or 
whatever it was that had taken the likeness of G. 
had disappeared." 

Lord Brougham's account of it afterward showed 
that he had evidently made a journal record of the 
experience before he learned that his friend had died 
in India on the same day as this occurrence. The 
apparition occurred on December 19th, 1799, and 
soon after Lord Brougham arrived in Edinburgh on 
his return a letter arrived from India announcing 
the death of G. on the date mentioned. The ex- 
perience produced a profound impression upon Lord 
Brougham's mind, but wisely for his time and for the 
lack of similar instances at command to suggest any 
supernormal significance, he treated it as possibly a 
dream during a little period of unconscious sleep or a 
casual hallucination. But the case illustrates a fairly 
well authenticated instance of a coincidental appa- 
rition, no matter how we explain it. 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 49 

The second instance is one from Dr. George J. 
Romanes, F. R. S., the distinguished disciple of Dar- 
win and almost his peer in scientific reputation. He 
writes the account of his experience to Mr. Myers, 
the secretary of the Society for Psychical Re- 
search : 

" Toward the end of March, 1878, in the dead of 
the night, while believing myself to be awake, I 
thought the door at the head of my bed was opened, 
and a white figure passed along the side of the bed to 
the foot, where it faced about and showed me it was 
covered, head and all, with a shroud. Then with its 
hands it suddenly parted the shroud over the face, re- 
vealing between its two hands the face of my sister, 
who was ill in another room. I exclaimed her name, 
whereupon the figure vanished instantly. Next day 
(and certainly on account of the shock given me by 
the above experience) I called in Sir W. Jenner, who 
said my sister had not many days to live. She died 
in fact very soon afterwards. 

" I was in good health, without any grief or anx- 
iety. My sister was being attended by our family 
doctor, who did not expect anything serious ; there- 
fore I had no anxiety at all on her account, nor had 
she herself. I have never, either before or after this, 
had such an experience." 

This is what may be called a premonitory incident 
for the sake of classification and its objective reality 
in any sense can be questioned on several grounds. 
But it is not mentioned here with any implication of 
its supernormal significance, and even if it were this 
would not represent the appearance of a discarnate 



50 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE* LIFE 

spirit in any explanation of it based upon personal 
identity. 

John Addington Symonds, one of the best known 
of the English literary scholars, was the subject of 
the following experience. He says, writing to the 
Society for Psychical Research: 

" I was a boy in the sixth form at Harrow, and, 
as head of Mr. Rendall's house, had a room to my- 
self. It was in the summer of 1858. I woke about 
dawn, and felt for my books upon a chair between 
the bed and the window, when I knew that I must 
turn my head the other way, and there between me 
and the door stood Dr. Macleane, dressed in a clergy- 
man's black clothes. He bent his sallow face a little 
toward me and said, ' I am going a long way — take 
care of my son.' While I was attending to him I 
suddenly saw the door in the place where Dr. Mac- 
leane had been. Dr. Macleane died that night (at 
what hour I cannot precisely say) at Clifton. My 
father, who was a great friend of his, was with him. 
I was not aware that he was more than usually ill. 
He was a chronic invalid." 

Mr. Andrew Lang, who will not be accused of su- 
perstition, narrates the following experience. It is 
found in his article on Apparitions in the Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica: 

" The writer once met, as he believed, a well- 
known and learned member of an English univer- 
sity, who was really dying at a place more than one 
hundred miles distant from that in which he was 
seen. Supposing, for the sake of argument, that 
the writer did mistake some other individual for the 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 51 

extremely noticeable person whom he seemed to see, 
the coincidence between the subjective impression and 
the death of the learned professor, is, to say the 
least, curious." 

Dr. Weir Mitchell reports an interesting case in 
the experience of his father, who was also a phy- 
sician. His father had a patient in an insane asylum 
who occasionally had lucid intervals. One morning 
Dr. Mitchell went to the asylum to inform the pa- 
tient of the death of his wife during the night. As 
he came in sight of the patient the man cried out: 
" You need not tell me. My wife is dead. I know 
it. She was here last night and told me herself." 
Supposing that there was no foundation for this 
story, Dr. Mitchell went to the manager of the in- 
stitution and told him what had been said, and that 
gentleman confirmed it by saying that he had heard 
the man talking in the night and went to him to see 
what was the matter, when the patient at once re- 
proached him for the disturbance and for driving 
away his wife, who, he said, was there and had told 
him that she had just died. This case is interest- 
ing as associating a veridical apparition with a patho- 
logical condition of mind when hallucinations are 
so probable and suggesting the complications which 
such phenomena having an apparently objective mean- 
ing may possess. 

Mr. Keulemans, who was a draughtsman in the 
work done for the Encyclopedia Britannica, a man 
of very considerable intelligence and free from super- 
stition of any kind, according to the testimony of 
Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, the secretary of the 



52 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Society, reports two interesting apparitions of his 
own similar in import to those that I have mentioned. 
Mr. Keulemans was living in Paris with his family, 
and on the breaking out of an epidemic of smallpox 
sent his three children to London to escape it. He 
tells his experience in the following language : 

" On the 24th of January, 1881, at half past seven 
in the morning, I was suddenly awakened by hearing 
Isidore's voice, as I fancied, very near me. I saw 
a bright, opaque mass before my eyes, and in the 
center of this light I saw the face of my little dar- 
ling, his eyes bright, his mouth smiling. The appa- 
rition, accompanied by the sound of his voice, was too 
short and too sudden to be called a dream; it was 
too clear, too decided, to be called an effect of the im- 
agination. So distinctly did I hear his voice that I 
looked around the room to see whether he was ac- 
tually there. The sound was of that extreme de- 
light such as only a happy child can utter. I thought 
it was the moment he woke up in London, happy 
and thinking of me. I said to myself, ' Thank God, 
little Isidore is happy as always.' " 

Mr. Keulemans describes the ensuing day as one 
of peculiar brightness and cheerfulness. He took a 
long walk with a friend, with whom he dined, and 
was afterwards playing a game of billiards, when 
he saw the apparition of the child. This made him 
seriously uneasy, and in spite of having received 
within three days the assurance of the child's perfect 
health, he expressed to his wife a conviction that he 
was dead. Next day a letter arrived saying that 
the child was ill; but the father was convinced that 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 53 

this was only an attempt to break the news ; and, in 
fact, the child had died, after a few hours' illness, 
at the exact time of the first apparition. 

Mrs. Keulemans confirmed the statements of her 
husband and that he had mentioned to her before re- 
ceiving news of the child's illness his fears, and finally 
told her that he had had an apparition of the child. 
Mr. Keulemans records a large number of coincidental 
experiences, some of them not apparitional, and among 
them one intimating the death of his father in Rot- 
terdam while he himself was in London, and one in- 
timating in much the same way the death of his 
grandmother, one the sickness of his daughter, and 
another the vision of his little boy, living, falling out 
of bed at the sea-side Worthing, near Brighton, and 
himself in London. The incident was verified by the 
mother, who was with the child. 

James Cotter Morison, a name that will be recog- 
nised by every intelligent man in the English world, 
narrates an auditory apparition, as it will have to be 
called, that is corroborated in a peculiar way, and is 
too long to be quoted here. Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter 
is responsible for one which he narrates in detail, and 
Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, the brother-in-law of 
Charles Darwin and a savant himself well known in 
England, tells a most remarkable instance in which 
his daughter-in-law had a vision in a waking or dream 
state of a man who about the same time had one of 
her, the details in each case corresponding to the phys- 
ical facts, neither party knowing the other at the 
time and simultaneously recognising each other when 
they afterwards accidentally met. The Marquis of 



54 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Bute, Mr. Andrew Lang and Dr. Ferrier of London 
are responsible for one of the most remarkable ap- 
paritions that has been put on record involving 
something of an experiment involving the phantasm 
of a deceased person twice and not known to the 
percipient and described so that the person was quite 
recognisable, as we experience this every day in our 
ordinary conversation. The case is too long even to 
abbreviate in a work like this. I can only refer the 
reader to the original record (Proceedings S. P. R. ? 
Vol. XI pp. 547-559). Dr. Hack Tuke, the cele- 
brated physician and alienist, reports a case of the 
apparition of a living person that he says is reliably 
authenticated. Miss Goodrich-Freer (Miss X), ed- 
itor of Borderland and author of Essays in Psy- 
chical Research, and well known for her experiences in 
crystal visions and herself rather sceptical of spirit- 
istic theories, went to a house which had the reputa- 
tion of being haunted for the purpose of experi- 
menting in apparitions. Though she had not seen 
any description of the phantasms seen there before, 
she had an apparition while at the house whose de- 
scription tallied with that given by others. 

Dr. Minot J. Savage vouches for the following 
incident, which he personally investigated, though 
he has to reserve the names and residences of the 
parties concerned. It is interesting as exhibiting 
what may occur at the point of death and have at 
least an apparent evidential value: 

" In a neighboring city were two little girls, Jennie 
and Edith, one about eight years of age, and the 
other but a little older. They were schoolmates and 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 55 

intimate friends. In June, 1889, both were taken ill 
of diphtheria. At noon on Wednesday, June 5th, 
Jennie died. Then the parents of Edith, and her 
physician as well, all took pains to keep from her 
the fact that her little playmate was gone. They 
feared the effect of the knowledge on her own condi- 
tion. To prove that they succeeded and that she 
did not know, it may be mentioned that on Saturday, 
June 8th, at noon, just before she became uncon- 
scious of all that was passing about her, she selected 
two of her photographs to be sent to Jennie, and also 
told her attendants to bid her good-bye. 

" She died at half past six o'clock on the evening 
of Saturday, June 8th. She had aroused and bid- 
den her friends good-bye, and was talking of dying, 
and seemed to have no fear. She appeared to see 
one and another of the friends she knew were dead. 
So far it was like the common cases. But now, sud- 
denly, and with every appearance of great surprise, 
she turned to her father, and exclaimed : ' Why, 
papa, I am going to take Jennie with me ! ' Then 
she added, ' Why, papa ! Why, papa ! You did not 
tell me that Jennie was here ! ' And immediately she 
reached out her arms as if in welcome, and said, 6 O, 
Jennie ; I am so glad you are here.' " 

Now I have not narrated these experiences to prove 
the existence of the supernormal, nor to prove any 
interpretation of them whatever. I am quite aware 
that it would be folly to lay any claims to the proof 
of anything " supernatural " by them, and that is 
not my object in quoting them. I have endeavored 



56 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

only to collate some instances of such experiences as 
come from authorities respectable enough to merely 
authenticate the fact that coincidental apparitions 
of the living and dying or dead actually occur. What 
they mean in particular it may take many years to 
determine. It is easy to discredit the testimony of 
men and women we do not know and about whom we 
have to take the authority of some one else. But it 
is different with men and women whose characters are 
public property like those I have mentioned, and I 
could have enumerated scores of others whose testi- 
mony is quite as respectable, and their incidents often 
far more interesting scientifically than those I have 
mentioned. But the few that I have quoted suffice 
to make it very probable that there are many more 
such experiences, and certainly show a type of phe- 
nomena which, if numerous enough, have significance 
for some conclusion that either has momentous conse- 
quences of value to the human race or tendencies to 
produce the most dangerous of intellectual illusions. 
It matters not for this work which consequence is in- 
volved, nor would it be of less value to prove for 
those who may be tempted to accept illusions that 
they are drifting toward delusion and insanity than 
it would be to sustain the fact of a future life. I am 
concerned in this narrative only with the necessity of 
scientific investigation and not of a priori neglect 
and ridicule. Psychology has a duty to mankind be- 
sides proving the truth in normal fields of experience. 
Its duty to expose error and delusion and to explain 
the phenomena that lead to them is quite as impera- 
tive as any other. 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 57 

Such instances as I have indicated induced Mr. Ed- 
mund Gurney and other members of the Society to 
institute what they called a Census of Hallucinations 
which would be a large collection of these phenom- 
ena. The results were partly reported in the Phan- 
tasms of the Living and partly in a later volume of 
the Proceedings. They represented all types of ap- 
paritions. The inquiries brought 17,000 answers, 
and nearly 10 % of these affirmed that they had ex- 
perienced some form of apparition or sensory equiva- 
lent, visual, auditory or tactile. Of these 352 were 
apparitions of living persons, and 163 apparitions 
of dead persons, and 315 were incompletely devel- 
oped instances. There were 62 death coincidences of 
a striking evidential type. Taking these with the 
apparitions of living persons and eliminating certain 
cases for evidential reasons there remained for the 
committee 350 instances on which to calculate the 
law of chances. The question was whether these 350 
apparitions involving apparently significant coin- 
cidences were due to chance alone. The technical 
method of calculating these I shall not detail, and no 
one seems to have questioned its correctness or fair- 
ness. But it involved as a conclusion that 142,500 
cases would have had to be collected in order to have 
30 coincidences of the kind due to chance, instead of 
350. In its conclusion the committee announced its 
conviction in the following language, which it itali- 
cised : 

" Between deaths and apparitions of the dying 
person a connection exists which is not due to chance. 
This we hold as a proved fact." 



58 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Farther than this the committee would not go, and 
it certainly was not justified in proposing on such 
scanty evidence any positive explanation of such phe- 
nomena. There was much said in the Phantasms of 
the Living to suggest, but the authors would not de- 
fend, the application of telepathy to them. It was 
content in the Census to eliminate chance and to 
leave positive conjectures to those who care to ven- 
ture upon them. But the general public has come 
to refer them to telepathy, and as the committee's 
work ignored the apparitions of the dead when they 
occurred more than twelve hours after the decease, 
it was natural on this account and other reasons to 
apply telepathy to such as had been considered, es- 
pecially as some of them could not lay the slightest 
claim to being spiritistic. We must not forget, in es- 
timating the application of any explanatory agency, 
that the large majority of the apparitions of an 
interesting coincidental character were of living per- 
sons. However we may choose to explain this type 
of phenomena, we could never adduce them as proof 
of the existence of discarnate spirits, and hence in 
lieu of this explanation it was natural, if any posi- 
tive theory at all were offered, to tolerate telepathy. 

But I must demur to any such interpretation of the 
phenomena. I do not think that they are either evi- 
dential of telepathy or explicable by it. I think that 
all three classes of apparitions are to be explained 
by the same general hypothesis. What this is I do 
not know. It will not do to choose telepathy because 
some of the phenomena are unquestionably not ex- 
plicable by discarnate spirits. In adopting an hy- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 59 

pothesis we must always have respect to the fitness of 
the cause to the effect, and there is neither the evi-> 
dential situation for telepathy nor anything in the 
phenomenon to suggest such an explanation. As 
the phenomena are all of the same type in spite of the 
difference in the conditions under which they occur, a 
difference which affects only evidential and not ex- 
planatory considerations, we have to find the one 
general cause of them. If we make that telepathy, it 
must most naturally be on the ground that the per- 
son appearing in the phantasm is the agent, and this 
would require us to assume the spiritistic theory to 
account for the apparitions of the dead, since we 
would have to make such realities existent in order 
to have the proper agents for explaining the phe- 
nomena. Otherwise we should have to suppose that 
they were telepathically initiated by living persons, 
thus vitiating the first supposition that the agents 
in the phantasms of the living were necessarily the 
persons seen. The simplest theory, of course, is illu- 
sion and hallucination, if we exclude chance and can 
show the causes for this particular type of coinci- 
dence which apparently does not occur in the annals 
of pure psychiatry ; at least psychiatry does not show 
the evidence of it. The point that psychiatry recog- 
nises is the fact that the same general explana- 
tion must be applied to all three classes of appari- 
tions, and I think it is right in this position. But 
it may be fairly contended that psychiatry cannot 
explain the coincidences of the apparitions with ob- 
jective events too remote from the percipient to af- 
fect sensory cognition. The exclusion of chance from 



60 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

the result and therefore the admission of a causal 
nexus in the coincidences discredits the hypothesis of 
subjective hallucination, and as telepathy cannot 
easily be applied without admitting the spiritistic 
theory which it is intended to nullify, the general 
cause is still to be sought. I do not think that telep- 
athy has any evidential application to them and I do 
not think that we have the data at present to justify 
confidence in any hypothesis. It must remain for fu- 
ture investigation to ascertain how all three types of 
apparitions are to be explained, with allowances for 
differences in the circumstances that are not essential, 
especially as the main characteristic of the phenomena 
is identical in all three types. What form that ex- 
planation will take I have no means of predicting, and 
I would have to venture upon inadequately supported 
conjectures. In brief, I think that the evidence is en- 
tirely lacking for any satisfactory theory, beyond 
the denial of chance, and men may differ on this 
conclusion of the committee. 

3. Mediumistic Phenomena 

Mediumistic phenomena generally purports to rep- 
resent communications from discarnate spirits. Their 
actual character very often may be nothing more 
than secondary personality, which is unconscious 
mental action impersonating the dead, or in some 
cases it may involve mind reading, if the evidence be 
sufficient to show the existence of the supernormal. 
But in spite of this broad scope of the term it gen- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 61 

erally assumes the spiritistic type of phenomena as 
representative of its intended meaning. I sh^fll here 
use the term in that sense. A " medium," therefore, 
is a person who claims to have communications with 
discarnate spirits or recognises that his or her phe- 
nomena are capable of that explanation. The man- 
ner of receiving alleged messages does not affect 
the conception of such persons. Sometimes their 
work is done in a trance or unconscious state, some 
times in a normal and conscious state. In either con- 
dition it may be by what is called automatic writing or 
by automatic speech. Or, again, in the normal state 
it may be by conscious speech interpreting impres- 
sions whose origin is not consciously known by the 
person acting as " medium." Sometimes the plan- 
chette may be used instead of the pencil for writing, 
and the Ouija board for spelling out communications 
instead of writing them. Or table tipping may be 
supposed to spell out words and sentences. But the 
manner of receiving " communications " does not de- 
termine the definition of the " medium." It only af- 
fects the evidential character of the results, whether 
they be supernormal or not. 

The phenomena of Mrs. Piper, near Boston, have 
been exploited by the Society in such a manner as 
to leave the impression that hers are the only me- 
diumistic phenomena we have. But this is far from 
being the case. There are reasons to be mentioned 
again why so much emphasis is placed upon this one 
case, and I do not mean to enter into them now. I 
wish to summarise very briefly the phenomena of a 



62 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

few other persons of this class, which have not been 
professional and whose results certainly justify in- 
vestigation. 

It would take too much space to give a satisfac- 
tory resume of the cases to which I wish to refer, 
and hence I must content myself with little more than 
references and the expectation that the reader, if he 
is interested at all, will examine them. I mention 
only those whose respectability cannot be questioned 
and who seem never to have been of the professional 
type. In the first stages of scientific inquiry into 
these dubious phenomena this limitation is an impor- 
tant one. I shall take my instances from Mr. Fred- 
eric W. H. Myers' Human Personality and its Sur- 
vival of Bodily Death (Vol. II, pp. 1-277) for con- 
venience, though most of the same cases are reported 
in the Proceedings of the Society. I must abbreviate 
the reports, so that the reader who may be interested 
in the study of the details and evidential incidents 
affecting the genuineness of the phenomena must ex- 
amine the references. 

Dr. Liebeault, the French physician, reports an 
authentic case " where a girl writes a message an- 
nouncing her friend's death at the time when that 
friend is, in fact, dying in a distant city" (pp. 169- 
170). Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, who I have said 
above was the brother-in-law of Charles Darwin, re- 
ports a most remarkable instance of his own expe- 
rience with two friends whose integrity he could not 
question. It was in June, 1889, and represented a 
purported message from a John Gurwood, intimat- 
ing that he had been in the Peninsular War in 1810, 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 63 

and drawing a picture representing a mural coronet 
with an arm holding a scimitar extending from the 
wall. The message also stated that he had killed him- 
self on Christmas day. Inquiry showed that a Col- 
onel Gurwood had been wounded in this war in 1812 
and never recovered from the effects of it, but killed 
himself on Christmas day in 1845. The message 
also mentioned the name of Gurwood's friend, Quen- 
tin, and intimated that there was a secret in regard 
to this man in connection with some scrape in the 
army. Inquiry showed that this was correct, and 
that Colonel Quentin had been court-martialed in 
1814 (pp. 162-167). I do not care what the mean- 
ing of the incident is, but only the form which it 
takes. We may explain it by secondary personality, if 
we have the evidence for this, but the point for us at 
present is the unconscious manner in which the sug- 
gestive phenomenon occurs, and the fact that it 
represents incidents well calculated to prove personal 
identity and hence the existence of survival, if the al- 
leged source of the facts be true. 

Dr. Richard Hodgson, secretary of the American 
Society, reports a very good case which was the re- 
sult of a direct experiment. It represents a test mes- 
sage arranged before death to be revealed after it, if 
return were possible. The tests arranged were to re- 
veal where a certain piece of brick was placed before 
death and the contents of a short letter which had 
been written and sealed before death. For months 
after the man's death the survivor got nothing satis- 
factory, until experiments were tried at home by the 
lady and her mother themselves by table tipping. 



64 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

The alphabet was said over and the table tipped, evi- 
dently through unconscious muscular action, at the 
letters appropriate until the sentence, " You will find 
that piece of brick in the cabinet under the toma- 
hawk. Benja." Its place of concealment was not 
known to the parties present, but the piece of brick 
was found as indicated, under the tomahawk and 
concealed in a shell at the bottom of the cabinet. 
Then the letter was spelled out in the same way, the 
message being : " Julia, do right and be happy. 
Benja." When the letter was opened this was found 
to be the sentence in it (pp. 182-185). 

Such a story, of course, is incredible to most of 
us, and I do not repeat it to be believed, but to indi- 
cate that the ordinary objection to its credibility 
cannot be raised. The lady and her mother were not 
likely to engage in a trick to fool themselves, and 
the experience was one that Dr. Hodgson came across 
incidentally in his investigations, and found it hav- 
ing a respectable origin. What the explanation is 
will have to be determined by innumerable cases of 
the kind adequately authenticated. 

Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers reports a case which 
is extraordinary on any theory whatever. It came 
to him on the authority of a physician with a Euro- 
pean reputation and his name has to be withhheld, 
as the incidents recorded would be out of place in his 
scientific surroundings. Mr. Myers, however, vouches 
for his name and reputation. He is given the pseu- 
donym of Dr. X. The incident purports to be a case 
of hypnotic control from the side of the " spirit 
world," and the " control " which directed the medi- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 65 

cal treatment of a patient of Dr. X's was an intimate 
friend of Dr. X's and a European physician of much 
repute. The story is too long to be quoted here and 
should be read (pp. 124-130). The explanation is 
not important. It is the fact that is interesting. 

Dr. Ermacora of Padua reports some remarkable 
instances of real or apparent supernormal phenomena 
connected with automatic writing and apparently not 
amenable to telepathic explanation (pp. 446-447), 
and the Countess of Radnor reports a large number 
of apparently supernormal experiences of a Miss A., 
some of which purport to be spiritistic and are too 
complicated to even abridge here (pp. 447-456). 
Mr. B. F. Underwood, a man widely known in the 
United States as a freethinker, vouches for the ex- 
periences of his wife in automatic writing which he 
himself witnessed in most cases (pp. 461-466). M. 
AksakofF reports two cases (pp. 466-476). 

One of the most remarkable and interesting of rae- 
diumistic incidents is one that I take from the ex- 
periences of Stainton Moses. Many of his expe- 
riences rest upon his own statements and authority 
alone, and while his probity cannot be questioned the 
scientific importance of all facts of this kind depends 
upon the confirmation of their occurrence by inde- 
pendent testimony or such facts outside the subject's 
knowledge as makes their credibility possible. In 
this instance we have the attestation of facts which 
render the word of Mr. Moses credible independently 
of his known honesty, and the task of scepticism 
more difficult. It purports to be a message from a 
lady whom Mr. Moses had known in life, but of whose 



66 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

death he did not know. I quote in full the account 
which Mr. Myers gives of the incident: 

" The spirit in question," says Mr. Myers, " is 
that of a lady known to me, whom Mr. Moses had 
met, I believe, once only, and whom I shall call 
Blanche Abercromby. The publication of the true 
name was forbidden by the spirit herself, for a reason 
which was at once obvious to me when I read the 
case, but which was not, so far as I can tell, fully 
known to Mr. Moses. The lady's son, whom I have 
since consulted, supports the prohibition, and I have 
consequently changed the name and omitted the dates. 

" The lady died on a Sunday afternoon, about 
twenty-five years ago, at a country house about £00 
miles from London. Her death, which was regarded 
as an event of public interest, was at once telegraphed 
to London, and appeared in Monday's Times; but, 
of course, on Sunday evening no one in London, save 
the press and perhaps the immediate family, was cog- 
nisant of the fact. It will be seen that on that even- 
ing, near midnight, a communication, purporting to 
come from her, was made to Mr. Moses at his secluded 
lodgings in the north of London. The identity was 
some days later corroborated by a few lines purport- 
ing to come directly from her, and to be in her hand- 
writing. There is no reason to suppose that Mr. 
Moses had ever seen this handwriting. His one 
known meeting with this lady and her husband had 
been at a seance — not, of course, of his own — 
where he had been offended by the strongly expressed 
disbelief of the husband in the possibility of any such 
phenomena. 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 67 

" On receiving these messages Mr. Moses seems to 
have mentioned them to no one, and simply gummed 
down the pages in his MS. book, marking the book 
outside ' Private Matter.' The book when placed 
in my hands was still thus gummed down, although 
Mrs. Speer was cognisant of the communication. I 
opened the pages (as instructed by the executors), 
and was surprised to find a brief letter which, though 
containing no definite facts, was entirely character- 
istic of the Blanche Abercromby whom I had known. 
But although I had received letters from her in life, 
I had no recollection of her handwriting. I hap- 
pened to know a son of hers sufficiently well to be able 
to ask his aid — aid which, I may add, he would have 
been most unlikely to afford a stranger. He lent me 
a letter for comparison. The strong resemblance 
was at once obvious, but the A. of the surname was 
made in the letter in a way quite different from that 
adopted in the automatic script. The son then al- 
lowed me to study a long series of letters, reaching 
down till almost the date of her death. From these 
it appeared that during the last year of her life she 
had taken to writing the A (as her husband had al- 
ways done) in the way in which it was written in the 
automatic script" (loc. cit. pp. 230-231). 

These are by no means the only instances which 
might be quoted, but I have given enough to accom- 
plish the purpose which I have in this chapter. This 
is merely to mention some instances of real or alleged 
communications with discarnate spirits that can 
claim respectability of origin and evidential incidents 



68 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

calculated to suggest their reliability as facts, how- 
ever we may account for them. I do not pretend for 
a moment that they prove what they allege. It will 
require much more and much better evidence to es- 
tablish the fact of survival of death, and it is not our 
first duty to effect this proof, but to see if our 
facts claiming that character are credible in any sense 
whatever, and owing to considerations which must 
rule in scientific method we have first to see whether 
our witnesses are trustworthy, and whether, whatever 
their character, their testimony can in any way be 
corroborated by outside evidence. I have, therefore, 
confined the instances quoted to such persons as have 
either been accustomed to scientific observation or 
such as can have their statements rendered probable 
by some form of confirmation. I think that the cases 
involved show the widespread existence of mediumistic 
phenomena, however we explain them, and that the 
main want at present is a systematic reproduction of 
them in numerous cases extending over a number of 
years, in order to reach a scientific understanding 
of their meaning and importance. Such illustrations 
as I have given challenge investigation, and this is 
all that I wish to show by them. If they contribute 
any portion of the evidence bearing upon such a con- 
clusion as a life after death they are important, as 
related to one of the most momentous problems that 
science or philosophy ever approached, and if they 
are only instances in which we are likely to be led 
astray in our ideas of the cosmos and its tendencies, 
so much the more dangerous are they to the multitude 
and all the more imperative is it that scientific men 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 69 

should be the responsible leaders in the investigation 
of them and in the dispossession of delusion. The 
complete breakdown of the old religious ideas, which 
undoubtedly held mankind in some of its best moral 
tendencies, and the widespread development of tran- 
scendental philosophies as maudlin as Neo-Platonism, 
and the insanities of astrology, palmistry and similar 
vagaries — to say nothing of those crazes founded 
on a half truth, and which are helped by the refusal 
of science to direct human convictions in this turbid 
sea of abnormal and apparently supernormal psychol- 
ogy — are closely related to each other. One is the 
consequence of scepticism and criticism applied to 
traditional beliefs and the other is the consequence 
of that resolute faith in the transcendental which the 
older religion had fostered, but which is now as scepti- 
cal of dogma as science drifting farther away from 
practical and ethical life than the church. There is, 
therefore, a profound mission for science in this field 
whatever may be the conclusion of its labors, and I 
shall not forecast what they might be. I can only 
say that, in an age when scientific method has be- 
come the substitute for biblical authority, whether 
rightly or not it is not necessary to say, it is not un- 
fair to ask of it that it accept its responsibilities and 
direct human convictions on the problem of a future 
life in a manner to protect the humanities of history 
and to deserve the respect of mankind for its interest 
and guidance. 



70 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

4. Miscellaneous Results 

There were many other subjects of psychological 
interest that came under the purview of the Society's 
work besides those to which I have given prominence 
in this summary. They were of a various charac- 
ter and most of them pertained to matters affecting 
scientific methods in dealing with obscure and dif- 
ficult phenomena and precautions against error in the 
study of them. I shall do nothing more in this book 
than to call attention to them and advise the student 
to examine them carefully if he wishes to ascertain 
something of the pitfalls which await the investi- 
gator who ignores the complications and difficulties, 
evidential and otherwise, that haunt the path of prog- 
ress in matters of this kind. The titles and refer- 
ences of the articles will suffice for the reader, and 
they are taken from the Proceedings of the Society, 
accessible in most good libraries. 

Report on the Phenomena of Theosophy, or 
Madame Blavatsky, by Richard Hodgson and others, 
Vol. Ill, pp. 201-400. On some Physical Phenomena 
commonly called Spiritualistic, by Prof. W. F. Bar- 
rett, Vol. IV, pp. 25-42. Results of a Personal In- 
vestigation of the " Physical Phenomena " of Spirit- 
ualism, by Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, Vol. IV, pp. 25-74. 
The Possibilities of Mai-Observation in relation to 
Evidence for the Phenomena of Spiritualism, Vol. IV, 
pp. 75-99. The Possibilities of Mai-Observation and 
Lapse of Memory from a Practical Point of View, 
by Richard Hodgson and S. J. Davey, Vol. IV. pp. 
381-487. The Canons of Evidence in Psychical Re- 



GENERAL PROBLEMS AND RESULTS 71 

search, by Prof. Henry Sidgwick, Vol. VI, pp. 1-6. 
Apparitions of the Virgin m Dordogne, by Leon 
Marillier, Vol. VI, pp. 100-110. On Alleged Move- 
ments of Objects Without Contact, by F. W. H. My- 
ers, Vol. VII, pp. 146-198 and 383-394. A Case of 
Double Consciousness, by Richard Hodgson, Vol. VII, 
pp. 221-257. On Spirit Photographs, by Mrs. 
Henry Sidgwick, Vol. VII, pp. 268-289. Mr. Da- 
vey's Imitations by Conjuring of Phenomena some- 
times attributed to Spirit Agency, by Richard Hodg- 
son, Vol. VIII, pp. 253-310. The Defence of the 
Theosophists, by Richard Hodgson, Vol. VIII, pp. 
129-159. Mind-Cure, Faith-Cure, and the Miracles 
of Lourdes, by Dr. A. T. Myers and F. W. H. My- 
ers, Vol. VIII, pp. 160-209. Resolute Credulity, by 
F. W. H. Myers, Vol. XI, pp. 213-234; Coinci- 
dences, by Alice Johnson, Vol. XIV, pp. 151-330. 

There are many important observations and facts 
in Mr. Myers' articles on the Subliminal Conscious- 
ness which show the dangers of the ordinary mind 
in the presence of unusual phenomena. They are 
scattered throughout the Proceedings of the Society 
and will have to be searched for by the interested 
reader. Dr. Morton Prince has an important case 
affecting subconscious mental action and dramatisa- 
tion of personalities which many in the past would 
have mistaken for spiritistic phenomena. The Census 
of Hallucinations, Vol. X of the Proceedings, con- 
tains chapters on Illusions, Hallucinations, and Ex- 
pectancy and Suggestion that are most important, and 
the Phantasms of the Living contain much material on 
the same subjects, affecting the common liability to 



72 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

mistake the supernormal. One can hardly read this 
matter carefully without feeling discouragement in 
regard to the possibility and usefulness of investiga- 
tion in the subject, but he will console himself by the 
observation that it is not wise or helpful to accept any 
transcendental existence without the cautions and limi- 
tations which any such important belief must admit 
as a condition of being accepted at all. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 

There have been two great tendencies in human 
thought and action, and they divide mankind, rough- 
ly speaking, into two classes. They may be called 
the scientific and the religious types of mind. One 
thinks and acts with reference to facts and the other 
with reference to hope. But as all action is in one 
sense based upon a hope of some kind, we may per- 
haps express the antithesis better by saying that the 
hopes of the one are based upon experience and the 
hopes of the other upon ideals that ignore experience. 
However this may be, one type will not accept any 
belief unless it can base it upon present facts, veri- 
fiable human experience; the other wants to believe 
in some idyllic future and persists in doing so if it 
has to evade the real or apparent significance of the 
present experience. One concentrates its attention 
upon " nature," the sensible physical world, which 
always seems clear and intelligible to him ; the other 
concentrates its attention upon " supernature," a non- 
sensible reality which is a world of hopes and aspira- 
tions. One lives in the present; the other lives for 
the future. One makes money and the other makes 
religion. Of course, there are natures plentiful that 
combine both tendencies and they are perhaps the 
healthiest intellectual and moral types, so that I am 

not trying to represent the two tendencies as neces- 

73 



74 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

sarily in an irreconcilable conflict. They have as- 
sumed an antagonistic attitude toward each other 
because each is so exclusive about his interests. The 
division of labor in the world tends to narrow our 
affections and interests and it does not matter in what 
field of thought and activity this division takes place, 
it tends to produce differences of class ideas and prej- 
udices, and though this conflict is not wholly excus- 
able by this circumstance, it appears to represent the 
process by which progress in both directions has been 
secured. 

But the most curious part of the case is that the 
scientific man, in all his alleged reverence for fact and 
emphasis upon the material phenomena of sense for 
the formation of his conception of things and the 
regulation of his actions, is quite unconscious that the 
basis of all his work is a supersensible world of amaz- 
ing character, and this is especially true of the as- 
sumptions of modern science which has postulated 
realities as far beyond sense as any spirit could be 
supposed to be. This was quite manifest in both 
schools of Greek philosophy, the one headed by Plato 
and the other by Epicurus, and Greek philosophy 
has always been assumed to have been predominantly 
actuated by regard for things of sense. But I shall 
return to this general tendency of scientific thought 
toward the supersensible, after thus remarking that 
it represents the common characteristic of the op- 
posed schools, while I pause to note the real point 
of difference between the conceptions of the scientific 
mind and those of the religious mind. This is the 
distinction between the mind that emphasises law or 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 75 

the uniformity of " nature " and the mind that hunts 
for liberation from the hard restraints of such law. 
It is, perhaps, better to say, owing to the claim of 
" law " on both sides, that the difference represents 
the opposition between the believer in an impersonal 
and the believer in a personal order of the world, the 
one an absolutely fixed and invariable order and the 
other a capricious and variable one adjustable to the 
purposes of a personal agent. I do not contend that 
the two are necessarily antagonistic, but the con- 
troversies of the past have so generally been conducted 
with that assumption that we are in the habit of 
conceiving the fixed order of events as excluding per- 
sonal agency in their determination. But, though a 
personal and an impersonal order may be mutually 
exclusive, a fixed and a personal order are not so. 
They are quite consistent with each other. But it is 
much more difficult to find evidence of a personal in- 
terpretation of " nature " in an order of the mechan- 
ically fixed sort in which individuals are sacrificed 
to a Juggernautic process than in one which reflects 
a variability that protects individuals against de- 
struction. But the evidential defect of the personal 
view does not indicate a conflict between the scientific 
and religious conception of things as they may be 
understood in the light of all the facts, though it 
affects convictions regarding it. We must always re- 
member that the personal view of the world was taken 
for the purpose of supporting the probability of a 
future life, and that it only followed the example 
of the prevailing philosophy, which was wholly 
a priori, when it was lax in its demand and use of 



76 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

evidence. But when we have come to realise that the 
religious conception is compatible with some form 
of fixed order and that the problem of knowledge 
of a safe and sane type must be determined by respect 
for present facts, we shall not first resort to a phil- 
osophic speculation about a personal order of " na- 
ture " to defend the probabilities of belief, but accept 
the canons of science and investigate the residual 
phenomena of human experience which have been 
hitherto cast into outer darkness, and we shall do 
this without any prognosis of its outcome and without 
any despair or waste, if the result is not what we 
may have hoped. 

Now the scientific mind which confines its interpre- 
tation of " nature " to the most easily verifiable facts 
of experience has usually supposed itself justified in 
denying the fact and the possibility of a future life. 
The religious mind on various grounds usually be- 
lieves and affirms it, and it is the differences of criteria 
and canons between them that determines the differ- 
ences of their convictions, the one being much more 
stringent in his demand for evidence than the other. 
One thing is certain, however, and that is that there 
could be no dispute between the two schools of 
thought, if life after death were sensibly provable as 
are every day experiences, and that, if it be a fact, 
it represents a supersensible condition of reality. 
The believer in it must assume some sort of super- 
sensible or transcendental world beyond the reach of 
direct sensory experience if he is to explain the ab- 
sence of the kind of evidence for a future life that 
physical science demands for its marvels. The 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 77 

sceptic who relies on the uniformities of human ex- 
perience and upon his senses for the evidence of his 
beliefs will, of course, exact very severe credentials 
for so extraordinary a claim as the survival of per- 
sonal consciousness, after all the triumphs of physi- 
ology and the silence of all the ages. " Thousands 
of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been 
swallowed up of time, and there remains no wreck of 
them any more, and Pleiades, and Arcturus, and 
Orion, and Serius, are still shining in their courses, 
clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted 
them on the plains of Shinar." 

The problem of a future life, therefore, involves 
two questions of evidence : ( 1 ) Whether there is any 
supersensible reality at all, with its bearing upon the 
possibility of conceiving the survival of consciousness 
after death, and (2) whether there is any evidence 
that makes the survival of personal consciousness an 
imperative hypothesis. These questions define for us 
the method of approaching and solving the problem, 
and this requires us to examine briefly the conception 
of the problem as it has been worked out by the devel- 
opment of materialism and the investigations of 
psychic research. I shall approach the question, 
however, from the standpoint of physical science for 
the purpose of completely disarming the presumptions 
on which it usually relies for discrediting psychic re- 
search. I mean to throw physical science upon the 
defensive against a spiritualistic interpretation of the 
phenomena which are under investigation. The main 
point, therefore, to be first kept in mind is, that the 
conclusions of physical science make for the possi- 



78 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

bility of personal survival after death, though they do 
not in any sense prove it. My first argument will be 
ad hominem; that is, based upon the physicist's own 
premises, and it will devolve upon him to discredit the 
case by abandoning the fundamental conditions and 
conclusions of his own science. 

The first question is whether there is any super- 
sensible reality in the world. I said above that all 
Greek thought was based upon the assumption of 
such a reality at the basis of the sensible world. It 
still called this supersensible world " physical," but 
without any consciousness of the qualifications under 
which this was either possible or implicative of greatly 
modified conceptions of the world. No one will doubt 
that Plato made the basis of things supersensible. 
His " ideas," which ought to be called " reals," as 
they denote the permanent realities of the world as 
over against the transient, were entirely supersensi- 
ble and in no way accessible to the senses. It was 
supposed that the doctrine of Epicurus opposed that 
of Plato, but in fact it did so in name only. What 
Plato called " ideas " Epicurus called " atoms." 
There was a great difference in one respect. Plato 
was not always clear in the use of his " ideas." They 
were generally a name for the essential qualities of 
individual objects, that is, attributes that were com- 
mon to individuals in a class and persisted through 
the species from parent to offspring. But he also 
gave the term a meaning to denote something having 
self-motion which the Epicureans gave to their atoms. 
With Plato the " idea " was neither a state of con- 
sciousness nor a mere function of something and so 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 79 

phenomenal or transient, but it was a " reality " that 
persisted like the Epicurean atoms, and in its super- 
sensible character is perfectly comparable with them. 
But pass this by as irrelevant. The certain thing is 
that the "idea" or "form" (in our parlance, 
" real " ) of Plato was a permanent acting thing, and 
the atom of Epicurus was a permanent passive thmg 
in motion, and both supersensible. The only point of 
apparent difference was that the materialists called 
their supersensible reality physical. But it was su- 
persensible nevertheless. The only thing that linked 
their conception of it with the physical was the 
attributes ascribed to the atoms. They were supposed 
to be hard, similar in kind, having weight and shape, 
but entirely incapable of being discovered by the 
senses. The modern atomic theory has gone much 
farther than this, after accepting the ancient doctrine 
as in the main correct or satisfactory for its purpose, 
which was to explain the material complexity of or- 
ganic and inorganic compounds. The modern theory 
says nothing about the shape of the atom and noth- 
ing about its perpetually falling. It has weight and 
affinity and is perhaps in perpetual activity. How it 
can be in perpetual activity consistently with the doc- 
trine of inertia is not made clear. But the main 
point is that the doctrine places the supersensible at 
the basis of the sensible precisely as did Greek specula- 
tion, and though it still regards this basis as physical, 
it assumes a world transcending sense which opens the 
way to conceiving it possible that there might be 
realities of a supersensible type making possible the 
survival of consciousness. Once admit that the basis 



80 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of things is supersensible and there is no barrier to 
the assertion that much is possible which could not be 
admitted where sense perception is the canon of truth. 
But modern science has gone even further than a 
radical modification of the ancient atomism. It has 
come to the conclusion that even the atom which was 
before supposed to be a simple and indivisible reality 
is complex, and in the estimation of men like Sir 
William Ramsay and Sir Oliver Lodge, has justified 
the supposition that the atom or ultimate constituent 
of all matter is composed of electricity or in some way 
a modification of electrical energy, a view which sim- 
ply throws the reins free to all sorts of speculations 
that have been rife in the class which many of us have 
had to restrain because it was not deemed respectable ! 
But this aside, we have in this position of physical 
science the reducibility of the supersensible material 
atom to something still more supersensible and mys- 
terious than ever, and yet we are not allowed to talk 
about the possibility of spirits and survival after 
death! With physical science declaring as a proved 
fact the impossible of the preceding ages, it is strange 
to find it so obstinate against the possibility of the 
possible of all ages ! It is interesting, too, to remark 
that this new theory of matter abandons all the prop- 
erties that in the ancient and the modern conception of 
atomism had characterised the elements. Weight, in- 
ertia, shape, density, affinity, motion in space, etc., are 
not indicated in this new ultimate, and in fact its na- 
ture is about as well described as Herbert Spencer's 
" Unknowable." None of the characteristics by 
which we know and call a thing " matter " are per- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 81 

ceptible in its constitution, and yet it is sacrilege to 
speak or think of anything like " spirit," which might 
be some form of this reality, simply because genera- 
tions of men have come to dislike the word. In the 
same direction of thought is the doctrine that the 
elements are evolved from some one ultimate and sim- 
ple reality. It is supposed that Mendeleyeff's classi- 
fication of the elements points to this conclusion, as it 
shows a relation of density between them assumed to 
suggest that even the elements are not the ultimate 
reality in the cosmos. Here is a conception which 
goes beyond " matter " for its primal substance, or if 
it calls it " matter " does not realise that the term 
has lost its distinction from " spirit," and yet it is 
superstition to think it possible that we might find 
reason or evidence to tolerate the existence of a soul 
and to cast a doubt on the doctrine that consciousness 
is a function of the brain ! 

Then again we have Roentgen rays, radio-active 
forms of energy, and wireless telegraphy, all of which 
represent supersensible modes of reality. They are 
based on sensible facts in the physical universe, but 
none of them reveal themselves directly to the senses. 
All that we have to evidence them is some effect in 
the physical world which cannot be explained by the 
ordinarily known modes of action. Their effects are 
sensible, but they as causes are wholly supersensible. 
What limit, then, is there to the forms of energy in 
the cosmos? Why suppose that they stop with these 
elusive agencies? What ground have we to say to 
science, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther " ? 
Why is it so insane to wonder whether the phenomena 



82 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of apparitions, which Mr. Spencer regards as the basis 
of religion in all ages, and whether mediumistic phe- 
nomena might not reveal something not dreamt of in 
our ordinary philosophy, and to endeavor to protect 
the race from illusion in such a field, when it is so 
noble to find argon, Roentgen rays, radio-active agen- 
cies, and wireless telegraphy, which, if they mean any- 
thing, point toward the very possibility for which I 
am suggesting the respectability? 

Again the ether hypothesis is the most definite 
abandonment of the old theory of matter as the only 
ultimate reality in the universe. There is not a single 
attribute in it, according to the suppositions usually 
entertained, that justifies its description as matter, in 
any sense affecting either the common or the scientific 
theory of ordinary matter. There is no assurance 
that it is atomic, that it is subject to gravity, that it 
has anything like density, that it has color, sonorous- 
ness, tangibility, or other sensible qualities, or any of 
the speculative qualities of the scientist's " matter," 
except elasticity and extension, its elasticity being 
said to be perfect, which means nothing because per- 
fection is a negative attribute. But there is every- 
thing in the scientist's account of ether to suggest 
the attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, indivisi- 
bility, unchangeability, etc. ; these have been the terms 
in which men in theological ages described God. It 
is scientific and sane to say ether, but not to say 
spirit. There is, of course, some reason for this, but 
it is not one that excuses any bigoted opposition to 
the possibility of spirit. " Spirit," if usable at all in 
philosophic parlance, ought to imply the accompani- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 83 

ment of consciousness or the possibility of conscious- 
ness, whether it denote the material or immaterial 
reality as its ground, and that possibility of conscious- 
ness beyond the existence of the physical organism 
that we know is the problem. But the existence of 
ether takes the human mind so far beyond the limita- 
tions of the ancient materialism that, while nothing 
is proved in the spiritual field by it, it is folly to 
indulge in dogmatic denials or in ridicule of the pos- 
sibility of the spiritual. There is so much supersen- 
sible reality actually admitted that it ought not to be 
insane to wonder whether there may not be more 
of it at the bottom of apparitions and mediumistic 
phenomena. The physicist should remember the fate 
of his sneering at the alleged existence of meteors, and 
of travelling balls of electricity, asserted at first on the 
evidence of the common man. He at first ridiculed 
the stories about them, finally accepted them as facts, 
appropriated all the honors of their discovery, and 
learned no lessons of humility by the experience. 
Meteors even became in his opinion the best means 
of explaining the production and the conservation of 
the sun's heat! And this after having fought the 
belief in their existence with all his might ! The his- 
tory of hypnotism, euphemistic for Mesmerism, might 
be quoted as an illustration of the same tendency of 
respectability wherever it has the power and the votes, 
and the respectability usually consists only in this im- 
munity. Caution and deliberation are the duties of 
the scientific man and he is not to be castigated too 
severely for hesitation in the acceptance of every 
claim presented to his attention, but while he is justi- 



84 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LITE 

fied in suspense of judgment at all times, he is not ex- 
cusable for taking the attitude of a man who will not 
entertain possibilities for what he does not always be- 
lieve. But the old materialism has been too severely 
shaken by later speculation and discoveries for the 
physicist to justify the kind of intolerance toward 
the effort to prove the existence of a soul that led in 
the middle ages to every form of persecution against 
science. Ridicule may be for a while as effective an 
instrument against progress as the torch and stake 
were against the liberty of science, but neither agency 
ever succeeds finally in suppressing the truth, if the 
phenomena are recurrent enough to constantly enforce 
attention to them, and this persistency seems to be a 
characteristic of a certain type of residual phenomena 
in psychology. 

I might take up several special fields of physical 
science and reinforce the argument from the tendency 
to enlarge the territory of the supersensible at the 
basis of the sensible world, but I think that the in- 
stances which I have mentioned suffice to show that 
the physicist must remain quiet if he does not wish 
to be refuted out of his own mouth when he under- 
takes to discredit the possibility of spiritual agency 
beyond the known phenomena of sense. The persons 
to question this are those who limit all knowledge to 
sensory experience, and question the existence of any- 
thing whatever supersensible, including atoms, ether, 
and electrical energy of a substantial type. But the 
believer in these transcendental physical realities ought 
not to stumble at the possibility of spirits, though he 
is justified in hesitation and extreme cautiousness in 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 85 

regard to the alleged evidence. It is not the absurd- 
ity or impossibility of a future life that gives the 
rational man his difficulties in the challenge to his 
belief. It is the comparative paucity of the alleged 
evidence that will stand scientific scrutiny. So 
meager is it in comparison with the evidence on which 
the general affairs of life and the discoveries of phys- 
ical science are based that sane men may well pause 
before the demands made upon their credulity, espe- 
cially after the attempt to study the alleged evidence 
for the existence of discarnate spirits has revealed in- 
credible sources and quantities of illusion and hal- 
lucination, to say nothing of fraud and mal-observa- 
tion. These make the problem a larger one than 
those which physical science has to face. 

It will be necessary in the further consideration of 
what the problem of proving a future life is to ex- 
amine what the theory is that stands in the way of 
accepting the existence of a soul and its survival. I 
refer to the theory of materialism and the conception 
of it which has prevailed so long and which is so 
strong in the estimation of physical science. To ex- 
plain what materialism means and what the facts are 
that support it will be to outline the method by which 
it has to be disproved, if that be possible at all. But 
we shall neither understand the problem before us in 
this book nor the strength of the materialistic theory 
unless we do thus approach the matter as defined for 
us by traditional controversies. 

The ancient materialism was identified with the 
atomic theory of matter. This conceived all physical 
objects as known to the senses to be compounds of the 



86 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

elements which were atomic in nature. This view of 
organic and inorganic compounds was carried down 
into modern times, and it led to the definition of all 
phenomena as functions of these compounds. Mater- 
ialism thus took a position opposed to the theological 
interpretation of nature and denied the existence of 
God and the immortality of the soul. In its broadest 
conception, where it was conceived as a cosmic doc- 
trine and so defined as convertible with the theory that 
all phenomena whatsoever were material phenomena 
and where such a thing as immaterial or spiritual ex- 
istence of any kind, except as phenomenal or func- 
tional modes of matter, was deemed impossible, it was 
a general philosophy. With this broader view of it 
this work has nothing to do. But reduced to its 
psychological conception, it is convertible with the 
statement that consciousness is a function of the 
brain. Now functions of the physical organism or 
body are admittedly perishable with it, and hence if 
consciousness be regarded as a function of the organ- 
ism as digestion, circulation, perspiration are, it must 
be conceived as having the same destiny. 

Let me take some facts in physical science which 
show how materialism can explain or tries to explain 
phenomena, which have no permanent existence. A 
gaslight, for instance, is the resultant of the com- 
bination of oxygen and carbon. Water is the result- 
ant of the combination of oxygen and hydrogen. In 
each of these instances, the resultant shows what is 
not found in the elements. Thus neither carbon nor 
oxygen exhibits the phenomenon of light alone. Their 
properties are very different. But in the act of com- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 87 

bining to form carbonic acid they produce the phe- 
nomenon of light, a property or functional activity 
that neither element exhibits alone. Again, neither 
oxygen nor hydrogen will alone quench thirst or a 
fire, but in combination they show this property which 
they do not show in their elementary condition. Now 
this same phenomenon of producing properties not 
apparent or real in elements characterises the whole 
process of organic and inorganic compounds, and this 
process seems to determine the nature of all cosmic 
phenomena. Now we have only to recognise the 
proved fact that all organic compounds, and especial- 
ly the human organism and brain, are exceedingly 
complex compounds. The fact enables the physi- 
ologist to appeal to this possibility to account for 
the phenomena of consciousness as functions of the 
brain, seeing that the brain is more intimately con- 
nected with mental action than any other part of 
the body. No one questions the belief that digestion, 
inhalation, circulation, perspiration and all the secre- 
tions are functions of the bodily organism; and only 
the philosophic superstition that, because consciousness 
cannot be a mode of motion, as all material functions 
are supposed to be this, it cannot be a function of 
the body or brain, prevents the psychologist from 
admitting that the materialistic position is the proved 
one. But we have no reason to suppose that all phe- 
nomena of matter are modes of motion by necessity, 
and if we had there is no way of proving that con- 
sciousness is not one of them. However such contro- 
versy may be settled, the extent to which phenomena 
can be explained by the principle of composition in 



88 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

matter is a presumption in the absence of other evi- 
dence that consciousness can be classified in some sense 
with the other functions of the organism. Two 
strong arguments in facts can be given to sustain this 
view, one positive and the other negative. 

We find in physiological science, in the phenomena 
of insanity, brain and other diseases, accidents and 
injuries, and various bodily conditions that the integ- 
rity of consciousness is determined by the integrity 
of the organism, being healthy when the organism is 
healthy and abnormal when the organism is abnormal. 
While this may not absolutely prove that conscious- 
ness is a function of the brain, it creates that pre- 
sumption by virtue of the fact that the causal priority 
of the disturbed or normal occurrence of mental phe- 
nomena is the bodily condition. This dependence in- 
evitably suggests the relation most natural to scientific 
conceptions and that is illustrated in the relation of all 
the other functions of the body which vary in their 
action and integrity with the normal and abnormal 
condition of the physical organism. When organism 
explains so much of the phenomena we observe it is 
rational to suppose that it also explains consciousness. 

That I am correctly stating the materialist's posi- 
tion may be indicated by what others say of it. 
" Throughout the animal kingdom," says John Fiske,, 
" we never see sensation, perception, instinct, volition, 
reasoning, or any of the phenomena which we distin- 
guish as mental, manifested except in connection with 
nerve-matter arranged in systems of various degrees 
of complexity. We can trace sundry relations of 
general correspondence between the increasing mani- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 89 

festations of intelligence and the increasing compli- 
cations of the nervous system. Injuries to the nerv- 
ous structure entail failures of function, either in the 
mental operations themselves or in the control which 
they exercise over the actions of the body; there is 
either psychical aberration, or loss of consciousness, 
or muscular paralysis. At the moment of death, as 
soon as the current of arterial blood ceases to flow 
through the cerebral vessels, all signs of consciousness 
cease for the lookers-on; and after the nervous sys- 
tem has been resolved into its elements, what reason 
have we to suppose that consciousness survives, any 
more than that the wetness of water should survive its 
separation into oxygen and hydrogen ? " 

Dr. William Osier, of Johns Hopkins University, 
and recently called to Oxford, England, in his Inger- 
soll Lecture at Harvard University, indicates the po- 
sition of materialism very clearly. " Modern physi- 
ological science," he says, " dispenses altogether with 
the soul. The old difficulty for which Socrates chided 
Cebes, who feared that — 

The soul 
Which now is mine must re-attain 
Immunity from my control, 
And wander round the world again, — 

this old dread, so hard to charm away, lest in the vast 
and wandering air the homeless Animula might lose 
its identity, that eternal form would no longer divide 
eternal soul from all beside, — this difficulty science 
ignores altogether. The association of life in all its 
phases with organisation, the association of a grada- 



90 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

tion of intelligence with increasing complexity of or- 
ganisation, the failure of the development of intelli- 
gence with an arrest in cerebral growth in the child, 
the slow decay of mind with changes in the brain, the 
absolute dependence of the higher mental attributes 
upon definite structures, the instantaneous loss of con- 
sciousness when the blood supply is cut off from the 
higher centers — these facts give pause to the scien- 
tific student when he tries to think of intelligence apart 
from organisation." 

The evidential situation points in the same direc- 
tion. By this I mean that our habits of thought in 
forming convictions about anything whatsoever neces- 
sitate our recognition of the view that the facts of 
general observation are against the spiritualist's 
theory of the case. Let me explain this by illustra- 
tion. 

I observe that seed placed in the ground will grow 
when the temperature is suitable and that when the 
temperature is not suitable it will not grow. I be- 
come confirmed in the belief that the heat is the cause 
of this growth by the uniformity of the relation be- 
tween it and growth, and so consider growth to be 
a phenomenon dependent upon this causal agency and 
that it will neither occur nor perdure without such 
conditions. In the same way frequent observation 
leads to the conclusion that rain is the condensation of 
moisture in the air and that the clouds are the accom- 
paniment of it. Before we know anything about the 
uniformity of such a phenomenon we observe that 
rainfall is associated with a certain type of cloud 
and by frequent experience we discover that rain does 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 91 

not fall unless this type of cloud is present, and we 
then feel certain that the cloud is the cause or a nec- 
essary condition of it in some form. Again we find 
that fire is the result of the composition of carbon 
and oxygen, as indicated above and that we cannot 
produce a fire without this relation between the two 
substances, so that we feel obliged to suppose that the 
effect or phenomenon cannot take place unless those 
conditions exist. It is the same throughout the whole 
plane of nature. Facts seem dependent upon the re- 
sults of composition, and this truth can be formulated 
in a general way by the illustration of A and B, in 
which B stands for a phenomenon and A for a cause. 
Thus, if we observe the fact B associated with A we 
may suspect that A is its cause, but we cannot assure 
ourselves until we have observed the fact a large 
number of times and in varying circumstances, and 
until we have learned that B does not occur when A is 
absent. In this manner we come to accept as our cri- 
terion of conviction in all matters whatsoever the prin- 
ciple that B must be present with A and absent if A is 
absent, if we are to suppose that there is any necessary 
connection between them, and if B disappears when 
A disappears we say that B is a transient and perish- 
able event. It has no persistence or existence beyond 
the sensible conditions in which we observe its uniform 
occurrence. 

Now let us apply this mode of thought to con- 
sciousness to see how scientific method and common 
sense oblige us to consider it, or at least apparently 
oblige us to think of it. We find in our experience 
that consciousness is associated with a bodily organ- 



92 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ism and, apart from the phenomena of psychical re- 
search, which are refused recognition by most scien- 
tific men, there is no evidence that this consciousness 
exists apart from the bodily organism. The most 
natural conclusion under such circumstances, espe- 
cially in the light of the manner in which we form 
all our beliefs, is that consciousness is a function of 
the organism and perishable with it like digestion and 
circulation. In this mode of interpretation of the 
case science and common sense alike are correct, in so 
far as the apparent facts are concerned, and the argu- 
ment stands in favor of materialism and making it the 
only tenable hypothesis unless we can show that it 
mistakes the observed, or supposedly observed, rela- 
tion of consciousness to the organism and that there 
are facts showing that consciousness can exist apart 
from the physical organism. To this question we 
shall have to devote ourselves presently. 

The most important point to be remarked as a con- 
clusion of this evidential way of looking at the prob- 
lem is the fact that materialism as a theory does not 
depend for its real significance upon any determina- 
tion of the " nature " of matter, nor upon the denial 
that any immaterial energy exists. It can consist 
with any view whatever of the " nature " of reality, 
whether we call it matter or spirit. The whole argu- 
ment for the existence of the supersensible as a pre- 
sumption for the existence of spirit and the persist- 
ence of consciousness after death, falls to the ground, 
as the facts mentioned to show that phenomena are the 
resultant of composition do not require us to deter- 
mine the nature of the reality that enters into com- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 93 

position. It may be any supersensible reality what- 
ever. We do not require to insist that matter is the 
basis of things in order to sustain the real meaning 
of the ancient and modern materialism. The use of 
the word would only deceive us into the belief that 
" matter " can mean only what it was commonly sup- 
posed to be, namely, a sensible reality only. Besides 
as shown, " matter " has become so abstract a con- 
ception, so refined into the supersensible when it is 
even applied to the ether or other ultimate substance 
out of which the elements have presumably been 
evolved, that the question is not at all what name we 
shall apply to it, but what is its behavior. We may 
call atoms spirits, or we may call the ether spirit, if we 
like, and it would not alter the conception of the rela- 
tion of phenomena to composition. Suppose we call 
oxygen and hydrogen spirit instead of matter, this 
would not alter the fact that the capacity of water to 
quench thirst or fire was dependent upon their compo- 
sition and dissolvable with the breaking up of the 
composition. And so throughout the whole range of 
known phenomena. There is no help in attacking the 
physicist for his belief that there is a supersensible 
reality. We may say and think what we please about 
this, as long as the facts are what we observe them, 
namely, the resultants of composition, all the meaning 
of materialism that made it a view opposed to immor- 
tality remains intact, and we have to resort to some- 
thing very different from determining the " nature " 
of reality in order to create a presumption in favor of 
survival after death. The old speculative method 
of talking about the " nature " of matter and the 



94 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

" nature " of spirit becomes folly when we do it for 
settling questions of this kind. We have to ascer- 
tain what the facts are and not what the " nature " of 
things is. The problem becomes a scientific and not 
a philosophic one. 

Philosophy is helpless and worthless for proving a 
future life. It may be able to show us what a rational 
order would be, but it cannot prove that the existing 
order is rational until some form of a future life 
is proved. One of the conditions of conceiving the 
cosmos rational is that it shall give some form of sur- 
vival, because it is useless to ask men to value a 
personal life, with its highest ideals, above an im- 
personal one, if nature does not conserve it as well as 
matter and energy. If there were no ideals that may 
be valued so highly or considered imperative in his 
development the case might be different. But with 
these ideals whose moral value he estimates above mere 
material existence he must pronounce an unfavorable 
judgment on the order that does not preserve what it 
makes imperative. What then will serve as evidence 
that nature probably protects the survival of personal 
consciousness ? 

The answer to this question is briefly that we must 
have present experiential facts which cannot be ex- 
plained by any other hypothesis. With philosophic 
and scientific speculations on the " nature " of matter 
or spirit disqualified by the facts which show that con- 
sciousness appears to be a function of the organism, 
whatever the " nature " of matter or spirit, the only 
resource is to see whether there are phenomena that 
will render probable or prove that consciousness sur- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 95 

vives as a fact, not as a consequence of some specula- 
tive theory about the " nature " of things ; for the 
" nature " of things has to be determined scientifically 
by the facts which show what it actually does, not by 
what we can imagine to be possible. Can, therefore, 
any facts be shown that at least suggest the proba- 
bility that we survive death? 

This question is not easy to answer, and before I 
attempt to answer it I must state the difficulties in the 
way of accepting many facts that are popularly 
claimed to be such evidence of survival, and the obsta- 
cles to the acquisition of the facts that might be 
desirable. These difficulties and obstacles to the prob- 
lem's solution are determined by the nature of the 
problem itself, which I must state. 

With the inability of philosophic or other specula- 
tion to prove survival and with the scientific coinci- 
dences between consciousness and bodily organisms as 
its apparent ground and cause, we are forced, by the 
scientific conception of the case, to isolate an individ- 
ual consciousness from an organism in order to prove 
its capacity for independent existence. This is the 
process of discovering a new element, such as argon, 
aluminium, etc. In the scientific field we isolate a 
phenomenon and its cause when we want to be sure 
that the particular phenomenon is not due to some 
other accompaniment than the desired or conjectured 
one. Can this be done for the individual conscious- 
ness? If it be possible at all, and if discarnate con- 
sciousness exist at all after being once connected with 
the human body, we must establish communication 
with it. We must establish an intelligent relation be- 



96 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

tween an isolated and discarnate soul and the living, 
if we are to have any scientific evidence of survival. 
We should remark also that as long as there is no such 
evidence as that which might be supplied by communi- 
cation there will be no conclusive evidence that there 
is any soul at all. The materialistic theory accounts 
quite naturally and furnishes very forcible evidence 
that consciousness is a function of the physical organ- 
ism, and that theory has to be accepted, if all the evi- 
dence is on its affirmative and none on the negative 
side that offsets it, no matter whether we regard this 
materialistic theory as proved or not. Science accepts 
its hypotheses on the balance of evidence and not 
merely because they are necessarily true. A theory 
may actually be false in nature, but if all the evidence 
at hand favors it the theory must be held until con- 
trary evidence is supplied. Hence the materialistic 
theory having all the normal and abnormal facts of 
psychology in its favor and none decidedly offsetting 
these, must be the only hypothesis for the rational 
scientific man until evidence is forthcoming that in- 
dividual consciousness has been isolated and communi- 
cation with it established. In that way the proof for 
the existence of a soul in the living must be the proof 
of its survival. As long as consciousness is possibly 
a function of the physical organism there is no need 
for supposing a soul as its subject cause, and if we 
prove its survival, we at the same time prove that 
consciousness with the living was in fact not a func- 
tion of the organism, although all the ordinary facts 
of experience were consistent with that supposition. 
It will be seen, therefore, what importance attaches 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 97 

to the isolation of personal human consciousness and 
communication with it. Is this possible and what are 
the difficulties of securing evidence that it is a fact? 
Let me first look briefly at the conditions of com- 
munication between the living, in order to suggest how 
much more difficult it would be to communicate with 
the deceased, if they exist after death. The first con- 
dition of communication between the living is some 
system of accepted signs, or a language. This may 
consists of sounds or gestures. Usually they are 
sounds and these give rise to language for auditory 
communication, while written symbols may represent 
these sounds and convert their meaning into visual 
signs for communication. Now if at any time either 
of two human beings do not understand any of these 
signs or symbols communication between them is al- 
most impossible, and when it is possible can be effected 
only by a small number of gestures or physical signs. 
Very little can be transferred or communicated be- 
tween such parties and that with great difficulty. 
How much greater must be the difficulty of communi- 
cating with the discarnate, if they exist, when the 
condition of all communication between one person 
and another, as we know it in our natural experience, 
is some physical fact or sign in our physical world. 
When an incarnate or embodied condition is necessary 
to produce an effect with any ease in the physical 
world we may well imagine the difficulties with which 
the discarnate, supposing them existent, must contend 
in the production of physical effects. A good in- 
stance of this difficulty is the phenomenon of paraly- 
sis, where consciousness may give no evidence of its 



98 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

existence until the individual recovers the control of 
his muscles. Here the manifestation of consciousness 
may be suspended right in the living, and when the 
individual is presumably still in some sort of relation 
with his own organism, how much more difficult to 
produce the required phenomena through the organ- 
ism of another or without it, when we do not common- 
ly know or suspect any influence of one living organ- 
ism on another without contact. All that we know in 
ordinary experience of a soul's influence on matter, if 
soul there be, is that which it produces through the 
living organism. This even has to be slowly and 
painfully learned in a long education. What must be 
the difficulties in the way of a discarnate soul when its 
accustomed relation or rapport with a living organism 
is not that which it possessed while incarnate or liv- 
ing? 

Take also the case of visibility. We cannot while 
living see a soul, according to all normal experience. 
We can be conscious of ourselves, but not conscious 
even then of the soul as anything sensibly perceived 
or existent apart from the organism. We cannot 
even in any direct way be aware of the soul of others. 
We have no direct means for ascertaining that others 
are conscious. The conviction that consciousness ex- 
ists in others is based solely upon an inference from 
the physical movements of their bodies. We infer 
that consciousness is present in certain organisms be- 
cause we can best account in that way for certain 
movements which appear to be intelligently initiated, 
as we directly know of such a cause in ourselves. But 
we can see neither the consciousness nor the soul of 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 99 

others even in life. How much more difficult it must 
be to see them or to infer their existence when they 
have no immediate physical accompaniments by which 
to manifest themselves and their existence. Most of 
us acquainted with science and its methods, and with 
the most natural conditions of manifestation, which in 
life even is not direct, would be pardoned for saying 
that such an appearance is impossible. 

But having seen the difficulties of manifesting 
the supersensible existence of spirit after death, we 
may examine the difficulties in connection with the 
evidential side of the problem. We have found that 
the difficulties are great, if not insuperable, in pro- 
ducing the phenomena that are necessary for proving 
survival, and now we have to examine the difficulties 
in accepting any alleged evidence that such phenom- 
ena have been produced. These seem to be as numer- 
ous and more perplexing than any connected with the 
production of the necessary phenomena. 

The first class of phenomena that claims to repre- 
sent evidence of departed spirits is that of apparitions 
of the dead. If we could assure ourselves that they 
were plentiful enough and verifiable in any such form 
as would attest their real existence beyond the imag- 
ination of the percipient of them, science might be 
more strongly impressed than it is with them. But 
they are first offset by the real or alleged fact of the 
apparition of the living whose explanation does not 
involve a proof of the discarnate. Then their value 
is impaired by the frequency of hallucinations and 
illusions. So many of the alleged appearances of the 
discarnate are explicable by one or the other of these 

LofC. 



100 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

causes that few are left -to stand the test of scientific 
scrutiny. In many of this residuum, if many we can 
call them, the question of their chance occurrence from 
unknown normal causes is so great as to offer great 
encouragement to scepticism. Then often those who 
have such experiences add or subtract from the ac- 
count of them, whether consciously or unconsciously. 
Some are defective observers of the phenomena. 
Some are affected by illusions of memory, or fail to 
make any record of their experiences, or fail to keep 
the evidence that would protect their statements from 
the erosive influence of doubt. Consequently when 
we come to reckon up the influences which make for 
scepticism in regard to the facts of apparitions we 
find intelligent men cautious and rightly cautious 
about the acceptance of so large a conclusion as a 
future life upon the credentials of apparitions. 

The next class of phenomena which claim a spiritis- 
tic source is the mediumistic type. This purports to 
be some form of communication with spirits, as ap- 
paritions claim to represent their visible appearance. 
Mediumistic communications may be by automatic 
writing, by automatic speech, or by either normal or 
abnormal speech involving some sort of unconscious 
access to alleged communications with the discarnate. 
I say nothing of " materialising " seances and slate 
writing phenomena, as I discard their consideration 
on the ground of their absolute worthlessness under 
any circumstances but such as are never accredited. 
Mediumistic phenomena of the credible and pertinent 
type are often so suggestive in their production of 
just the facts which scientific proof of survival after 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 101 

death demands that they offer the best opportunity 
for study and investigation. But they have manifold 
difficulties and objections to encounter which must be 
considered. 

First, there is the perpetration of fraud. This 
may take various forms. The medium may employ 
detectives for acquiring information about " sitters " 
and experimenters. This has been a very frequent 
method in the past. Then they may fish information 
from the " sitters " who are not always aware of how 
much they may tell in a casual way. Many may for- 
get how much they have told the medium at various 
times, and keeping no record of their experiments 
they have no account of them that can be respected 
by science even for proving fraud, to say nothing 
of what is necessary to prove the supernormal. Then 
the mediums may add shrewd guessing to their other 
dubious accomplishments. The " sitter " may give 
all sorts of conscious and unconscious hints in various 
emergencies which the shrewd medium knows so well 
how to improve. Suggestions by the voice, by mus- 
cular movements, by direct assent to questions by 
the medium, by acceptance of guesses by the medium, 
and various indications which are easily interpreted 
by this experienced class of adventurers who know 
the weak as soon as they see them. 

Then there is the whole field of juggler's tricks 
which forms the majority's conception of the whole 
subject, until it is almost impossible to get intelligent 
people to even imagine that there is anything more 
serious. 

Now all these sources of distrust must first be re- 



102 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

moved from any alleged mediumistic phenomena be- 
fore they can receive the serious attention of intelli- 
gent and scientific men. It may be easy or it may be 
difficult to remove them, but they must be removed 
before spiritistic theories can obtain any consideration 
but ridicule. In most cases, it requires the scientific 
man to prescribe the conditions upon which phenom- 
ena of the kind can become credible as evidence for the 
supernormal. 

The second difficulty in mediumistic phenomena is 
the influence of secondary personality, as it is called. 
This is a very much misunderstood phenomenon. 
Many think that secondary personality means another 
person inhabiting the human body, another person 
than the one who consciously controls it in a normal 
state. But this is not the meaning of the expression. 
It is a natural error to commit when one is not familiar 
with the phraseology of scientific psychology. But 
secondary personality is not another soul or person 
acting in conjunction with the normal personality on 
the organism. It is nothing more than unconscious 
mental action of the same person that can introspect 
his self -consciousness. Secondary personality is dis- 
tinguished from the primary personality, or normal 
consciousness and self-consciousness, only by the fact 
that its action is not perceived or remembered by the 
normal consciousness. But it is a function of the 
same soul or subject. The normal consciousness is a 
" personality " not a person. It is the evidence and 
activity of a person, this last term standing for the 
soul or subject of consciousness, in physico-legal par- 
lance, the body and all its functions with conscious- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 103 

ness included. Now the secondary personality is only 
an activity of this same person dissociated from the 
stream of consciousness which we can introspect and 
remember. We may call the secondary personality 
" subliminal consciousness " and there can be no ob- 
jection, as long as we distinguish it from the ordi- 
nary consciousness we know by the absence of a direct 
memory link between the two. It often behaves it- 
self like another " person," but this fact does not 
alter our conviction in regard to its real nature. The 
connection between it and the experiences of the nor- 
mal or primary personality is such as to preclude any 
explanation of the phenomena but the same general 
explanation that applies to the normal stream of 
consciousness. Its capacities and limitations are the 
same as those of the primary consciousness or person- 
ality. Its activity depends upon the attainments of 
the normal self through its ordinary sensory action 
and reactions. 

But I shall not go into any detailed account of sec- 
ondary personality, as there is no space for that in 
this brief discussion. All that I want to correct in 
the popular conception of the term is that idea which 
is so prevalent and which represents it as if it meant 
quite as distinct a " person " from the conscious self 
as a spirit would be. But it is not to be so conceived, 
whatever its appearance. What is noticeable in its 
action is the frequency with which this secondary 
personality in real or alleged mediumistic cases rep- 
resents that it is communicating with discarnate spir- 
its. It can often indulge in the loftiest sentiments 
and inspirational teaching, but the fundamental point 



104 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

in which it always fails to meet the demands of a 
spiritistic hypothesis is its inability to give facts 
which prove the personal identity of the individual 
alleged to communicate. It may invent incidents to 
simulate this effect, but it fails in anything but guess- 
ing, chance coincidence, fishing, and response to sug- 
gestion, all of which resembles the same processes in 
the conscious frauds, but is not amenable to the 
same reproach. Now in real or alleged mediumistic 
phenomena we have to disregard all statements that 
are explicable by secondary personality, until we have 
first assured ourselves that supernormal phenomena 
have been produced, and even then evidential facts 
must conform to the criterion of the supernormal 
which is the supersensible acquisition of knowledge. 

Now there is such an enormous mass of phenomena 
that is undoubtedly the result of secondary person- 
ality, and so many more that are explicable by it, 
that the medium who gives any evidence of the super- 
normal is very rare. The layman is not aware of the 
tremendous difficulties involved in the quantity and 
quality of matter that is produced and producible 
by secondary personality, that can neither be attrib- 
uted to spirits nor demands explanation by fraud. 
Secondary personality can no more be inculpated with 
ordinary fraud than can the somnambulist or the 
dreamer. Whatever imitation of the normal it repre- 
sents, it is not responsible, and may exclude everything 
but itself from the results. But it is a very exten- 
sive operator in the simulation of non-evidential spir- 
itistic communications. 

I shall not discuss telepathy as a difficulty in the 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 105 

proof of a discarnate existence, because it will come 
up later as an objection to the spiritistic theory in 
the facts that appear to sustain it, and because the 
scientific man generally has not yet fully convinced 
himself that telepathy is a fact. But if it be a fact, 
we must certainly show that it does not adequately 
explain the phenomena adduced to prove a future 
life. If the supernormal exists that cannot lay any 
claim to spiritistic origin, it certainly limits the evi- 
dence adducible to prove spirits, and it will no doubt 
have to be reckoned with wherever it claims to explain 
facts. 

Now having considered the difficulties in the evi- 
dential problem as shown by the necessity of eliminat- 
ing the possibility of fraud, of chance coincidence, 
of fishing and guessing, of suggestion and inference 
from hints and direct statements, and of secondary 
personality, it will be necessary to examine briefly 
what kind of evidence is necessary to prove a future 
life. What kind of facts will do this? What kind 
of phenomena are necessary to treat the subject of 
spiritism seriously after obtaining security against 
the above mentioned difficulties? 

The answer to this question will contain two im- 
portant conditions. (1) The facts given through 
mediumistic or other sources must represent super- 
normal knowledge. (2) The facts must illustrate 
and prove the personal identity of the particular 
person represented as communicating. 

In regard to the first of these conditions, the ac- 
quisition of the knowledge represented in the phe- 
nomena claiming a spiritistic source must exclude 



106 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

first fraud and secondary personality, and secondly 
all normal modes of acquiring information in an 
honest way. That is, the facts purporting to be 
evidence of discarnate spirits must be impossible on 
any normal hypothesis. Normal methods of obtain- 
ing knowledge are sense perception and inference, 
whether fraudulently or honestly employed. Any 
specific facts transcending explanation by fraud, sec- 
ondary personality, chance coincidence, guessing, sug- 
gestion, etc., such as detailed incidents, pass words, 
trivial experiences known only to the living and de- 
ceased person, or characteristic expressions, will be 
evidence of knowledge that has not been obtained by 
the ordinary processes of sense perception, and hence 
facts not explicable by any theory of knowledge 
based upon accepted ideas of the normal. All nor- 
mal knowledge is through the senses in some form 
with mental processes interpreting the meaning and 
connections of sensations. Knowledge of the same 
definite specific kind, though not sensory, must be 
obtained from supersensible sources and the conditions 
must make this proof against scepticism. All the 
spontaneous mental functions, as illusion and hal- 
lucination, secondary personality, imagination, 
dreams, etc., and all external physical impressions of 
the normal sensory type, must be excluded as possible 
sources of the real or apparent phenomena. 

As regards the second condition, the facts must 
be of the kind that will prove the personal identity 
of the discarnate. That is, they must prove that 
the source of the phenomena is what it claims 
to be, and this personal identity of the discar- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 107 

nate means that the deceased person shall tell 
facts of personal knowledge in his earthly life 
and tell them in such a quantity and with such a 
quality that we should not doubt his existence any 
more than we would if we received the same incidents 
over a telegraph wire or through a telephone. In 
this way and in this way alone, can we show that 
the intelligence involved is outside the medium through 
which the facts come. Besides being supernormally 
acquired the facts must represent intelligence and an 
outside intelligence. Given the conditions by means 
of which it can communicate the proof of survival 
after death the facts must be incidents in the earthly 
life, and usually, if not absolutely always, they must 
be very trivial and uncommon. Any one can conceive 
for himself what such facts would be, if he were 
called upon to prove his identity to a friend who 
doubted it, and hence I need not illustrate. The im- 
portant fact to be considered here is the exclusion 
of all normal sources of knowledge and the admission, 
as relevant, of only such information as is unequivocally 
supernormal and pertinent to the personal identity of 
a deceased person, all statements relative to tran- 
scendental or post-mortem modes of life being abso- 
lutely worthless as evidence, because they are neither 
verifiable nor relevant to the personal identity of de- 
ceased persons. 

I shall illustrate the situation in which we are 
placed for judging of the evidence for the existence 
of outside intelligence in any case, whether of living 
or deceased persons, and in any circumstances affecting 
the judgment of intelligence. Let me take first the 



108 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

case of a machine. We associate intelligence with a 
machine, especially one that is complicated in its 
structure and action. But we do not place the in- 
telligence m the machine. We place the intelligence 
in its creator who is outside its creation. The rea- 
son for this is the assumption of inertia which main- 
tains that matter can not move itself, but must be 
moved by a force outside the body moved. If it were 
not for this we might interpret the motion of a ma- 
chine as a force or some action within itself, as we 
do in living beings. But the doctrine of inertia im- 
plies that the motion of a machine is initiated by a 
force without the machine. Hence when we suppose 
intelligence associated with a machine at all we place 
it outside the machine in some other agent, its maker 
or its director, and this conclusion is determined by 
the general principle of the limitations assumed to 
characterise all inert machines. The intelligence that 
influences and controls them is independent of them. 

The case is quite different with living beings. 
Whenever we ascribe intelligence to the action of liv- 
ing beings it is placed within the organism, and not 
independent of it. This may be false. I am not 
concerned with the truth or falsity of the judgment, 
but only with the fact of it and its prevalence. It 
is in any case within the same space limitations, as it 
is not in the case of physical and inert machinery. 
The living organism seems, at least, to be capable of 
self-motion, and the consciousness associated with 
many of its actions is placed within the organism and 
thus appears to be a function of it. When this is 
once assumed the explanatory powers of internal and 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 109 

immanent mental functions will cover everything that 
does not originate from without. We must remem- 
ber also, as remarked above, that the existence of this 
intelligence in others than ourselves is purely a mat- 
ter of inference, or the interpretation of their ac- 
tions, and not a direct knowledge of observation. We 
explain certain adjusted actions by supposing that 
intelligence is their accompaniment or cause, and as 
long as those actions are the natural result of the sub- 
ject's own sensory and intellectual experience we do 
not think of attributing the intelligence initiating 
them to any agent outside the organism. Hence the 
force of fraud and secondary personality in explain- 
ing so many phenomena that reflect intelligence, but 
not the facts that we would ascribe to deceased per- 
sons. 

It will be necessary, therefore, to transcend the in- 
telligence and powers of any human organism in its 
normal functions, if we are to obtain facts that will 
serve as evidence for the proof of a future life. We 
must get facts that the normal functions of that or- 
ganism cannot explain and that reflect an intelli- 
gence outside it, precisely as in the case of a machine. 
It matters not whether the facts are acquired through 
automatic writing, or other unconscious means, or 
whether they are acquired through the medium of the 
normal consciousness, provided they transcend the 
capacities of normal sensation and inferences based 
on those sensations associated with physical impres- 
sions ordinarily explicable. We must have phenom- 
ena in the physical world, but with the indications 
that they are either nearly or remotely initiated from 



110 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

without the physical world and pertinent to their in- 
terpretation by intelligence beyond physical organ- 
isms. The facts will best present this evidence when 
the medium is automatic and unconscious, as that 
condition removes the ordinary explanation more eas- 
ily. But if the facts reflect an intelligence not ac- 
quired by normal sensory impressions they may still 
pass through the medium of the normal consciousness, 
though they will be much more open to criticism 
than if the organism resembles a machine in its ac- 
tion. But letting complications and delicate condi- 
tions alone, the clear fact is that phenomena claim- 
ing a spiritistic origin must be of the kind that we 
cannot explain by any normal process of sensation 
and intelligence in the organism which serves as a 
means for their production. That every one will 
admit. Now are there any facts that have such cre- 
dentials ? 

That they are possible, whether they are actual or 
not, might be suggested by more than one known in- 
cident in psychology and physiology, or even in phys- 
ics. First take the fact of hyperesthesia. This is 
an increased power of sensibility in certain cases of 
abnormal physical conditions when the organism can 
appreciate impressions that the normal sensorium will 
not perceive. No one knows exactly what the limits 
of this hyperesthesia are, and we can imagine a condi- 
tion of it when, if outside intelligences of the discar- 
nate type exist, they might give rise to phenomena in 
our world which indicate their action and lead to the 
proof of their identity. The existence of a group of 
supersensible forces like Roentgen rays, wireless tel- 



THE PROBLEM OF A FUTURE LIFE 111 

egram vibrations, radio-active energies, and perhaps 
innumerable agencies of a similar supersensible kind, 
suggest what might be employed in abnormal and 
hyperaesthetic conditions for effecting communication 
with a discarnate existence. I do not imply that any 
of these forces are usable for effecting such a result, 
but their existence limits the right of dogmatism to 
deny the possibility. If the possibility be once ad- 
mitted, in so far as physical science is concerned, it 
will only be a question of facts to decide whether 
such a communication has been effected. 

Again, if telepathy be an admitted fact, and I 
appeal to this here, only because many people admit 
it and appeal to it to discredit the theory of spirits 
in certain cases, it can be used in the service of the 
spiritistic theory instead of against it. Telepathy 
once accepted shows the existence of the supernormal 
and involves the conception that consciousness can 
transmit ideas independently of the normal action of 
the senses, so that after this admission it will only 
be a question of the kind of facts obtained to deter- 
mine whether they have not been telepathically trans- 
mitted by the discarnate. Though telepathy may be 
a difficulty evidentially considered, in certain phenom- 
ena at least, it may equally be the means by which 
the discarnate, if they exist, can communicate under 
favorable conditions and prove their identity. What 
then are the facts to suggest that the discarnate have 
actually communicated ? 

The answer to this question will occupy the rest 
of this book. I shall confine the statement and in- 
terpretation of them to the case of Mrs. Piper. I 



112 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

have above indicated that there are other similar 
instances of mediumistic phenomena, but not repre- 
senting the desirable quantity and complexity of 
facts necessary for scientific conclusions. 



CHAPTER IV 

HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 

I propose in this chapter to give a brief history of 
this singular case of experiment, including a few 
words on Mrs. Piper's personal history. The chief in- 
terest and importance of the case consists in the care 
with which fraud was excluded from a possible inter- 
pretation of its phenomena and the perfection and 
magnitude of the records made in the experiments. 
It is these two facts which justify the consideration 
of it by itself. 

1. Exclusion of Fraud 

Mrs. Piper's connection with trance phenomena be- 
gan in 1884. Her " husband's father and mother 
had been impressed by an experiment with a medium 
in that year and persuaded Mrs. Piper to try con- 
sultation with a medium who gave medical advice. 
She was suffering at this time with a tumor." The 
result was that she soon developed a trance state her- 
self and began sittings with her own friends. No 
important record of these sittings is accessible. Cas- 
ual experiments of this sort were kept up until 1885 
when Prof. James, of Harvard University, made his 
acquaintance with the case. His account will be stated 
in his own language: 

" I made Mrs. Piper's acquaintance in the autumn 

113 



114 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of 1885. My wife's mother, Mrs. Gibbens, had been 
told of her by a friend, during the previous summer, 
and never having seen a medium before, had paid her 
a visit out of curiosity. She returned with the state- 
ment that Mrs. Piper had given her a long string 
of names of members of the family, mostly Christian 
names, together with facts about the persons men- 
tioned and their relations to each other, the knowl- 
edge of which on her part was incomprehensible with- 
out supernormal powers. My sister-in-law went the 
next day, with still better results, as she related them. 
Amongst other things, the medium had accurately 
described the circumstances of a letter which she 
held against her forehead, after Miss G. had given 
it to her. The letter was in Italian, and its writer 
was known to but two persons in this country. 

" I remember playing the esprit fort on that occa- 
sion before my feminine relatives, and seeking to ex- 
plain by simple considerations the marvellous charac- 
ter of the facts which they brought back. This did 
not, however, prevent me from going myself a few 
days later, in company with my wife, to get a direct 
personal impression. The names of none of us up 
to this meeting had been announced to Mrs. Piper, 
and Mrs. J. and I were, of course, careful to make 
no reference to our relatives who had preceded. The 
medium, however, when entranced, repeated most of 
the names of 4 spirits ' whom she had announced on 
the two former occasions and added others. The 
names came with difficulty, and were only gradually 
made perfect. My wife's father's name of Gibbens 
was announced first as Niblin, then as Giblin. A 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 115 

child Herman (whom we had lost the previous year) 
had his name spelt out as Herrin. I think that in 
no case were both Christian and surnames given on 
this visit. But the facts predicated of the persons 
named made it in many instances impossible not to 
recognise the particular individuals talked about. 
We took particular pains on this occasion to give the 
Phinuit control no help over his difficulties and to 
ask no leading questions. In the light of subsequent 
experience I believe this not to be the best policy. 
For it often happens, if you give this trance-person- 
age a name or some small fact for the lack of which 
he is brought to a standstill, that he will then start 
off with a copious flow of additional talk, containing 
in itself an abundance of ' tests.' 

" My impression after this first visit was, that Mrs. 
Piper was either possessed of supernormal powers, or 
knew the members of my wife's family by sight and 
had by some lucky coincidence become acquainted with 
such a multitude of their domestic circumstances as 
to produce the startling impression which she did. 
My later knowledge of her sittings and personal ac- 
quaintance with her has led me absolutely to reject 
the latter explanation, and to believe that she has 
supernormal powers." 

Prof. James visited Mrs. Piper a number of times 
that winter and also sent strangers to her unan- 
nounced beforehand, in all of which about twenty-five 
reported. One half of these reported nothing worth 
mentioning. The remainder were surprised, accord- 
ing to the statement of Prof. James, at the communi- 
cations they received. This Prof. James reported in 



116 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

the American Proceedings for 1886. He concluded 
it with the statement : 

" I am persuaded of the medium's honesty, and of 
the genuineness of her trance; and although at first 
disposed to think that the 6 hits ' she made were either 
lucky coincidences, or the result of knowledge on her 
part of who the sitter was and of his or her family 
affairs, I now believe her to be in possession of a 
power as yet unexplained." 

Some attempts were made by Prof. James to hyp- 
notise Mrs. Piper, with partial success only until the 
fifth trial. But this experiment did not result in 
throwing any light upon the trance state, as the facts 
seemed to show that the hypnotic and trance states 
were different from each other. 

It was two years later before any further impor- 
tant experiments were undertaken, and these were by 
Dr. Richard Hodgson, who had been appointed Sec- 
retary of the American Society for Psychical Re- 
search. He came from Cambridge University in 
England, where he had been a lecturer in its courses 
before being sent to India to investigate the doings 
of Madame Blavatsky on whom he published an 
elaborate report convicting her of fraud. His story 
affecting Mrs. Piper may be told in his own language : 

" My own knowledge of Mrs. Piper," says Dr. 
Hodgson, " began in May, 1887, about a fortnight 
after my arrival in Boston, and my first appointment 
for a sitting was made by Professor William James. 
Professor James had visited her about a dozen times 
during the previous year and half, and had sent a 
large number of persons to her, making appoint- 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 117 

ments himself ' for most of these people, whose names 
were in no instance announced to the medium.' As 
a result of his inquiries he became fully convinced that 
Mrs. Piper had supernormal powers. 

" I had several sittings myself with Mrs. Piper, at 
which much intimate knowledge, some of it personal, 
was shown of deceased friends or relatives of mine; 
and I made appointments for sittings for at least 
fifty persons whom I believed to be strangers to Mrs. 
Piper, taking the utmost precautions to prevent her 
obtaining any information beforehand as to who the 
sitters were to be. The general result was the same 
as in my own case. Most of these persons were told 
facts through the trance-utterance which they felt 
sure could not have become known to Mrs. Piper by 
ordinary means. For several weeks, moreover, at 
the suggestion of one of the members, detectives were 
employed for the purpose of ascertaining whether 
there were any indications that Mrs. Piper or her 
husband, or other persons connected with her, tried 
to ascertain facts about possible sitters by the help 
of confederates, or other ordinary methods of inquiry, 
but not the smallest indication whatever of any such 
procedure was discovered. My own conclusion was 
that — after allowing the widest possible margin for 
information obtainable under the circumstances by 
ordinary means, for chance coincidence and remark- 
able guessing, aided by clues given consciously and 
unconsciously by the sitters, and helped out by sup- 
posed hyperesthesia on the part of Mrs. Piper, — 
there remained a large residuum of knowledge dis- 
played in her trance state, which could not be ac- 



118 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

counted for except on the hypothesis that she had 
some supernormal power; and this conviction has 
been strengthened by later investigations." 

The common knowledge that fraud of some kind 
could simulate the acquisition of supernormal infor- 
mation was the justification as well as the instigation 
of this careful experimentation to exclude its possi- 
bility, and it seems that the judgment was fairly 
uniform that fraud of no kind could explain the best 
part of the results. The detective and confederate 
methods of many " spiritualistic " mediums can ac- 
count for many a striking fact, but in addition to the 
exclusion of their possibility in this case was the 
fact that no evidence could be found that any attempt 
to get information in this or similar ways had been 
made. But the effort to satisfy themselves that some 
resource for fraud was not practiced was not abated 
by these experiments. Mrs. Piper was taken to Eng- 
land for experiment by the group of investigators 
there, which comprised such men as Prof. Henry Sidg- 
wick, Cambridge University; Prof., now Sir Oliver 
Lodge ; Prof. Barrett ; Mr. F. W. H. Myers ; Dr. Wal- 
ter Leaf ; and a few others. The design was to intro- 
duce Mrs. Piper to surroundings about which she 
knew nothing personally prior to this visit. It served 
as an obstacle to all clandestine knowledge. Mrs. 
Piper was taken to England in November 1889. Mr. 
F. W. H. Myers says of the precautions taken against 
fraud : 

" Professor Lodge met her on the Liverpool land- 
ing-stage, November 19th, and conducted her to a 
hotel, where I joined her on November 20th, and 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 119 

escorted her and her children to Cambridge. She 
stayed first in my house; and I am convinced that 
she brought with her a very slender knowledge of 
English affairs or English people. The servant who 
attended on her and on her two young children was 
chosen by myself, and was a young woman from a 
country village whom I had full reason to believe to 
be trustworthy and also quite ignorant of my own 
or my friends' affairs. For the most part I had my- 
self not determined upon the persons whom I would 
invite to sit with her. I chose these sitters in great 
measure by chance ; several of them were not resident 
in Cambridge; and (except in one or two cases were 
anonymity would have been hard to preserve) I 
brought them to her under false names, — sometimes 
introducing them only when the trance had already 
begun. 

Sir Oliver Lodge reports still further measures 
against the suspicion of fraud by Mrs. Piper. It 
seems that every resource was anticipated and provid- 
ed against. I give his statements of what was done 
to protect the results of experiment against ordinary 
suspicions. 

" Mrs. Piper's correspondence was small, something 
like three letters a week, even when the children were 
away from her. The outsides of her letters nearly 
always passed through my hands, and often the in- 
sides, too, by her permission. 

" The servants were all, as it happened, new, hav- 
ing been obtained by my wife through ordinary lo- 
cal inquiries and registry offices, just about the time 
of Mrs. Piper's visit. Consequently they were en- 



120 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

tirely ignorant of family connections, and could have 
told nothing, however largely they had been paid. 

" The ingenious suggestion has been made that 
they were her spies. Knowing the facts, I will con- 
tent myself with asserting that they had absolutely 
no connection with her of any sort. 

" The photograph albums and family Bibles were 
hidden by me the morning of the day after she ar- 
rived at my house. I had intended to do it sooner. 
This is manifestly a weak point. Like many such 
things it sounds worse than it is. The more im- 
portant books were in my study, and into it she did 
not go till just before the first sitting. One or two 
photographs she did look at, and these are noted. 
The safest thing is to assume that she may have 
looked at everything about the house. 

" In order to give better evidence, I obtained per- 
mission and immediately thereafter personally over- 
hauled the whole of her luggage. Directories, biog- 
raphies, Men of our Time, and such-like books were 
entirely absent. In fact there were scarcely any 
books at all. 

" The eldest child at home was aged nine, and the 
amount of information at his disposal was fairly 
well known to us. My wife was sceptically inclined, 
and was guarded in her utterances ; and though a few 
slips could hardly be avoided — and one or two of 
these were rather unlucky ones — they were noted and 
recorded. 

" Strange sitters frequently arrived at 11 a. m., 
and I admitted them myself straight into the room 
where we were going to sit; they were shortly after- 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 121 

wards introduced to Mrs. Piper under some assumed 
name. 

" The whole attitude of Mrs. Piper was natural, 
uninquisitive, ladylike, and straightforward. If any- 
thing was noticeable it was a trace of languor and 
self -absorption, very natural under the trying condi- 
tion of two long trances a day. 

" Her whole demeanor struck every one who be- 
came intimate with her as utterly beyond and above 
suspicion." 

These statements illustrate the kind of precautions 
generally taken during the history of the Piper ex- 
periments, and they are such that any future sus- 
picions of fraud of any kind must support themselves 
by specific evidence to account for specific facts and to 
explain the collective force of the results where the 
means would have to be so vast, when they are known 
to have been very meager, to ascertain a small por- 
tion of the information imparted by Mrs. Piper's 
trances. The whole burden of proof now rests upon 
the man who persists in irresponsible talk and sus- 
picion of fraud. I say boldly that no intelligent 
man, whether scientific or otherwise, would any 
longer advance such an hypothesis without giving 
specific evidence that it is a fact rather than an imag- 
inary possibility. 

There have been several sitters during the history 
of the case who thought they detected signs of con- 
scious fraud, but these were mere impressions formed 
from lack of acquaintance with trance phenomena 
and from first sittings, or from single sittings. But 
it is manifest that no man has the right to make up 



122 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

his mind from any single or first experiments, nor 
to trust to suspicions and impressions induced by a 
vague knowledge of trance phenomena. Moreover 
those who have expressed this suspicion have, in some 
cases, admitted its weakness and in some other cases 
its error or insufficiency as evidentially considered. 
Mr. Myers sums up the whole case as follows: 

" On the whole, I believe that all observers, both in 
America and in England, who have seen enough of 
Mrs. Piper in both states to be able to form a judg- 
ment, will agree in affirming (1) that many of the 
facts given could not have been learnt even by a 
skilled detective; (2) that to learn others of them, 
although possible, would have needed an expenditure 
of money as well as of time which it seems impossible 
to suppose that Mrs. Piper could have met; and (3) 
that her conduct has never given any ground what- 
ever for supposing her capable of fraud or trickery. 
Few persons have been so long and so carefully ob- 
served; and she has left on all observers the impres- 
sion of thorough uprightness, candour, and honesty." 

2. Psychological Incidents of the Case 

The psychological interest in this and similar cases 
begins with what is called the " control " in the par- 
lance of the spiritualists. It will be necessary to ex- 
plain briefly for the average layman what this means. 
The scientific man understands its meaning well 
enough, and it will only be necessary in this work to 
indicate clearly the use of the term as it must be em- 
ployed to make the Piper and similar cases intelligible 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 123 

in their superficial characteristics at least. The 
" control " claims to be a discarnate spirit, and is the 
agency, whether a real or alleged force outside the 
living organism of the medium, that exercises an in- 
fluence over this organism to produce the effects re- 
corded. If it be the secondary personality or sub- 
conscious mental action of the medium it acts like a 
real person and controls the motor or muscular sys- 
tem precisely as does the normal consciousness. If it 
be a spirit it exercises this control of the medium's or- 
ganism in the same manner as the normal subject, 
whether this be the primary or secondary personality. 
The " control " always gives itself another name than 
that of the normal person, and in this way repre- 
sents the appearance of something independent of the 
known person and organism. It is a frequent phe- 
nomenon in secondary personality. 

Apparently the first " control " in the experience of 
Mrs. Piper, which manifested itself soon after her first 
visit to the mediumistic physician mentioned, called 
herself " Chlorine " and claimed to be an Indian girl. 
The " control " of the mediumistic physician, Mr. 
Cocke, whom she visited, professed to be a French 
physician whose name was pronounced " Finny." 
This of course became known to Mrs. Piper in the 
process of her " development," and in some of her 
early trances, as reported by some of the sitters, the 
name of the " control " was pronounced " Finny " or 
" Fin-ne," and afterward became " Phinuit," pro- 
nounced " Finwee." It is evident that the assump- 
tion of this name is complicated with suggestion 
either in the normal consciousness or in the abnormal 



1U SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

condition of the trance. The " evolution " of this 
personality is indicated in some detail by Dr. Hodg- 
son's first report in the Proceedings of the Society 
for Psychical Research. 

After this personality became more definitely de- 
veloped it was induced to give its personal history, 
claiming to be the spirit of a French physician. I 
quote Dr. Hodgson's statements with quotations from 
the record: 

" In reply to my inquiries on different occasions, 
Phinuit stated that his full name was Jean Phinuit 
Scliville. ' Phinuit is one of my names ; Scliville is 
my other name; Dr. Jean Phinuit Scliville; they al- 
ways called me Dr. Phinuit.' He was unable to tell 
the year of his birth or the year of his death, but by 
putting together several of his statements, it would 
appear that he was born about 1790 and died about 
1860. He was born in Marseilles, went to school 
and studied medicine at a college called 6 Merciana ' 
(?) College, where he took his degree when he was 
between twenty-five and twenty-eight years old. He 
also studied medicine at ' Metz, in Germany.' At the 
age of thirty-five he married Marie Latimer, who had 
a sister named Josephine. Marie was thirty years 
of age when he married her, and died when she was 
about fifty. He had no children." 

He mentioned the " Hospital of God," or " Hospi- 
tal de Dieu " (Hotel Dieu), and referred to Dupuy- 
tren and Bovier, the former of whom is known to have 
been a distinguished French physician and surgeon 
who was born in 1777 and died in 1835. But there 
were contradictions in Phinuit's story of himself and in 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 125 

addition to this inquiries as to the existence of any such 
person in France did not confirm the story in a single 
detail. The consequence was that he has always been 
treated and must be treated in the discussion of these 
phenomena as a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper. 
But on any theory he is the central psychological 
phenomenon of the case for the apparent manage- 
ment of it in its early history. It was through the 
intermediation of this personality that the phenomena 
took on a spiritistic appearance and that many of 
the incidents clearly referring to the personal iden- 
tity of other deceased persons were produced. I 
shall speak of the period of his " control " as the 
Phinuit regime. 

The demand was made of Phinuit that he prove 
his identity as a condition of accepting his claim to 
be a spirit. But, as we have seen, he never succeeded 
in effecting this desired result. But he acted as in- 
termediary for the " communication " of facts which 
distinctly suggested the survival and presence of 
other deceased persons. Whether the incidents are 
more than telepathy may explain is not the ques- 
tion at present, but only the circumstance that they 
were what we would expect a discarnate person to 
tell, in part at least, to prove its identity, and they 
apparently took the explanation of the phenomena 
beyond the scope of secondary personality. Many 
things were done that bore evidence of being super- 
normal without being facts suggesting a spiritistic 
source. They rather suggested clairvoyance or 
telepathy or both, as they were not related to the 
personal identity of deceased persons. Consequently 



126 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

there was difficulty with any one theory in attempts 
to explain the phenomena. The confusion and 
fragmentary character of the " messages " were so 
great that a cautious scientific man had to reserve 
opinions or venture upon the most tentative hypothe- 
ses, until the causes of the limitations in the " commu- 
nications " could be ascertained. The prevailing hy- 
pothesis, with many, though a tentative view to help 
mental suspense while additional facts were accumu- 
lating, was that of telepathy and secondary person- 
ality combined. Phinuit was the supposed secondary 
personality of Mrs. Piper possessed with tele- 
pathic powers. But there was no clear assurance 
that this hypothesis really explained the phenomena. 
The Phinuit regime continued uninterruptedly 
until 1892, when a very interesting modification of 
the phenomena appeared, though still continuing for 
some years the chief " control " of Phinuit. While 
Dr. Hodgson was carrying on his experiments, a 
young man who had been a personal friend suddenly 
died in New York. He is called in the Reports by 
the name of George Pelham. This is a pseudonym 
adopted out of respect to the feelings of his living 
relatives. But he was a graduate of Harvard Uni- 
versity, and as indicated by Dr. Hodgson, " he was 
a lawyer by training, but had devoted himself chiefly 
to literature and philosophy, and had published two 
books which received the highest praise from com- 
petent authorities. He had resided for many years 
in Boston or its vicinity, but for three years preced- 
ing his death had been living in New York in bache- 
lor apartments. He was an Associate of our So- 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 127 

ciety, his interest in which was explicable rather by 
an intellectual openness and fearlessness characteristic 
of him than by any tendency to believe in super- 
normal phenomena. He was in a sense well known to 
me personally, but chiefly on his intellectual side; 
the bond between us was not that of an old, intimate, 
and if I may so speak, emotional friendship. We 
had several long talks together on philosophic sub- 
jects, and one very long discussion, probably at least 
two years before his death, on the possibility of a 
' future life.' In this he maintained that in ac- 
cordance with a fundamental philosophic theory which 
we both accepted, a 4 future life ' was not only in- 
credible, but inconceivable. At the conclusion of 
the discussion he admitted that a future life was con- 
ceivable, but he did not accept its credibility, and 
vowed that if he should die before I did, and found 
himself * still existing ' he would ' make things lively ' 
in the effort to reveal the fact of his continued ex- 
istence." 

This George Pelham died early in the year of 
1892. Dr. Hodgson heard of his death a day or two 
after its occurrence and was present several days at 
sittings during the following weeks, but no reference 
was made through Mrs. Piper to George Pelham. 
Between four and five weeks after his death Dr. Hodg- 
son was present at a sitting by a friend of George 
Pelham's and during it George Pelham's full name 
was given and many names and incidents that sug- 
gested the personal identity of the deceased person by 
that name. Sittings held by friends of the deceased 
man revealed more and more evidence of his identity 



128 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

which Phinuit could never furnish for himself, and 
among them was a reference to his promise to Dr. 
Hodgson to " make things lively," if he lived after 
death. The experiments were continued for several 
years before Dr. Hodgson would commit himself to 
the spiritistic interpretation of the phenomena. It 
was in the process of these experiments that the au- 
tomatic writing of Mrs. Piper was developed, ap- 
parently under the agency of this George Pelham, 
Phinuit having always employed vocal speech for his 
" communications." The resort to automatic writ- 
ing was a great help in keeping the record which has 
been practically perfect ever since. 

George Pelham soon came to exercise the func- 
tions of a " control " and for a time there were " com- 
munications " by speech and writing at the same 
time, Phinuit " talking " and Pelham " writing." 
In the course of this work, however, a remarkable and 
interesting change took place which shall be de- 
scribed in the language of Dr. Hodgson : 

" In the summer of 1895, when a friend of mine 
was having a series of sittings with Mrs. Piper, and 
asking questions of George Pelham, certain state- 
ments were made by George Pelham denying the so- 
called ' obsession by evil spirits.' My friend referred 
to the alleged s Spirit Teachings ' published by W. S. 
Moses, and the result of the conversation was that 
later on W. S. Moses purported to communicate at 
my friend's request through Mrs. Piper's trance. He 
was confused and incoherent — and George Pelham 
offered a warning to that effect. He gave entirely 
wrong names in reply to questions concerning the 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 129 

real identity of the Imperator, Doctor, and Rector 
mentioned in his * Spirit Teachings,' and failed later 
in attempting to answer test questions propounded by 
some of his friends. Later still, however, he did fur- 
nish some private information unknown to the sitters, 
and afterwards verified in England, and well adapted 
so far as it went as an indication of identity. 

" I shall not enter into detail concerning the pro- 
fessed appearances of W. S. Moses at later sittings. 
Mrs. Piper gave few sittings in the winter of 1895-6, 
and early in 1896 underwent a second operation, re- 
suming her sittings in October of that year. I 
pointed out to George Pelham the importance of 
making W. S. Moses ' clear,' and getting the answers 
to my test questions. The final result was that W. 
S. Moses professed to get the assistance of his former 
' controls,' who, after communicating on various oc- 
casions directly in November and December, 1896, 
and January, 1897, demanded that the control of 
Mrs. Piper's 6 light ' should be placed in their hands. 
In other w T ords, * Imperator ' claimed that the indis- 
criminate experimenting with Mrs. Piper's organ- 
ism should stop, that it was a 6 battered and worn ' 
machine and needed much repairing ; that ' he ' with 
his 6 assistants,' ' Doctor,' etc., would repair it as far 
as possible, and that in the meantime other persons 
must be kept away. I then for the first time ex- 
plained to the normal Mrs. Piper about W. S. Moses 
and his alleged relation to ' Imperator,' and she was 
willing to follow my advice and try this new experi- 
ment — to which I may say I was repeatedly and 
emphatically urged by the communicating George 



130 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Pelham. I explained at the following sitting to 
8 Imperator ' that the medium and myself agreed to 
the change. Much of what followed later was per- 
sonal and non-evidential. It was stated that there 
were many difficulties in the way of clear communi- 
cation, due chiefly to the fact that so many inferior 
and perturbed communicators had been using the ma- 
chine. Phinuit's last appearance was on January 
26th, 1897. Later on, other alleged ' communica- 
tors ' were specified as persons who would not injure 
the ' light,' in addition to what I might call W. S. 
Moses's group, and various persons who have had sit- 
tings in previous years with Mrs. Piper had opportu- 
nities of being present, and some new sitters also. 
Those who had sittings in previous years and who 
have been present since the change which I have de- 
scribed, were all struck by the improvement in the 
clearness and coherence of the communications from 
their ' deceased ' friends. Most remarkable has been 
the change in Mrs. Piper herself, in her general feel- 
ing of well-being, and in her manner of passing into 
trance. Instead of the somewhat violent contortions 
which she was apt to show in earlier years when 
Phinuit fi controlled,' she passes into trance calmly, 
easily, gently, and whereas there used to be fre- 
quently indications of dislike and shrinking when she 
was losing consciousness, the reverse is now the case; 
she seems rather to rejoice at her ' departure,' and to 
be in the first instance depressed and disappointed 
when, after the trance is over, she 6 comes to her- 
self ' once more in this s dark world ' of ours and 
realizes her physical surroundings. Various at- 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 131 

tempts by these new e controls ' to describe contem- 
poraneous incidents occurring elsewhere in this world 
have been notable failures. On the other hand there 
have been a few cases (said in 1898) under this 
regime where opportunity has been given for tests 
purporting to come from recently ' deceased ' per- 
sons. And in these cases, so far as I can judge, and 
so far as the incidents go, the results as a whole have 
been much clearer and more coherent than they were 
in similar cases formerly." 

The reader must remember that all this material 
which I have been quoting was produced through 
the automatic writing of Mrs. Piper, and it is here 
described as if it were actual conversation between 
the living. Mrs. Piper goes into a " trance " whose 
nature we do not know, except that it involves the 
suspension of her normal consciousness and in this 
condition the alleged messages from discarnate spirits 
are written visibly by her own hand. Her head lies 
upon a pillow placed upon a table and is turned away 
from the writing. The tests for anaesthesia or her 
unconscious state were exceptionally severe and such 
as are never employed by physicians to ascertain a 
similar condition. The writing does not present any 
special mystery to the scientific mind, as it is familiar 
with automatic work of this kind where there is no 
pretense or evidence of discarnate intervention. It is 
the contents of the " messages " that suggest some 
extraordinary origin, at least simulative of spiritistic 
communications. This representation of it, whatever 
its real character, whether merely subconscious and 



132 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

dramatic play by Mrs. Piper's secondary state, or the 
result of an independent spiritistic intelligence, is the 
only way to indicate intelligently its psychological 
interest, and we have only to dismiss from our imagi- 
nations all conceptions of visible and tangible ap- 
pearances in order to understand the nature of the 
phenomena as facts for psychology, and to appre- 
ciate what they represent in the development of the 
Piper case. 

What we now call the " Imperator group," repre- 
senting alleged spirits, assuming Latin names for 
reasons that have not been explained and for which 
we need not care until later discussion, may best be 
described, for the sake of clearness in understanding, 
as a group of personalities purporting to take charge 
of the " communications " from the " other side " 
precisely in the same manner in which Mrs. Piper 
has been scientifically managed on this side. From 
what has been said the reader can percieve that, on 
any theory whatever of the facts, they appear to be 
intermediaries for the " communication " of super- 
normal facts and that their work takes the form of 
supervision of the whole process. What will be the 
outcome is not yet known. But they still control 
the experiments and represent, with the frequent as- 
sistance of George Pelham, a most interesting and 
complicated psychological problem for science. 
What the Imperator group does cannot be treated as 
evidence of spirits until they prove their identity, but 
what is mediated through their action in proof of the 
identity of others must receive serious consideration 
of some kind and may indicate the supernormal ac- 



HISTORY OF THE PIPER CASE 133 

quisition of knowledge, while its analysis and expla- 
nation may suggest a theory beyond any form of sec- 
ondary personality that we know. 

This brief history of the experiments with Mrs. 
Piper will afford the general reader some conception 
of the machinery and difficulties attending the work 
and of the conditions through which the facts still 
to be summarised were obtained. I shall proceed 
next to give some account of these, with this prelim- 
inary statement that the reader must ever keep in 
his mind that they have been obtained under the pre- 
cautions against possible fraud as indicated in this 
history and with the supervision and mediation of the 
trance personalities which have been described. 



CHAPTER V 

INCIDENTS FROM THE ENGLISH REPORT 

In this chapter I propose to give a summary of 
the facts which the experiments with Mrs. Piper pro- 
duced while she was in England. I shall not select 
them with any reference to proving any theory or 
explanation of them, but only with reference to their 
supernormal character as facts. I mean in this and 
two or three of the following chapters to maintain 
an entire indifference to all explanations of the facts 
to be observed and hence not to assume that I am 
illustrating either telepathy or spirits in the narra- 
tive of the records. All that I shall admit into my 
purposes is the fact that the phenomena quoted are 
evidence of the supernormal acquisition of knowl- 
edge, and this means that the knowledge has not 
been normally acquired. Explanations will follow 
a statement of the facts. 

I have to give two types of facts, one of them 
wholly unevidential of spiritistic agencies and the 
other relevant to that supposition. There will prob- 
ably be a mixed class whose character the reader may 
determine for himself wherever it appears in the nar- 
rative. Sometimes instances of this mixed type may 
appear in one or the other of the main classes, and 
will be placed there according to the quantity of 
matter pertaining to one or the other of the kinds of 
incidents. In the last analysis some general theory 

134 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 135 

must account for this diversity of facts, but at the 
present stage of inquiry their types must be kept dis- 
tinct. 

1. Incidents in Experiments of Sir Oliver Lodge 

(a) Facts unevidential of spirit agency. At 
the first sitting with Sir Oliver Lodge Mrs. Piper re- 
ferred to a brother of his and described his character 
with some accuracy, saying that he was " a sort of 
happy-go-lucky fellow — taking the world as it is — 
wanting to see a good deal of it. Rather positive; 
likes to keep his own ideas. Not so deep in mind as 
you are, but deep in feeling." But the statement 
that this brother was in Australia was wrong. He 
was in America. There immediately followed a very 
definite diagnosis of a difficulty with Dr. Lodge's lit- 
tle boy which was found to be true a few days later, 
by the family physician. 

For a later sitting Mr. Gonner had written to his 
sister in London, Mrs. Piper being in Liverpool, to 
ask her mother to do something unusual between the 
hours of 11 and IS on Saturday morning, and to ob- 
serve what the mother did. Mr. Gonner's mother 
was not to know and did not know that it was to be 
done at his request. The sitting began a little be- 
fore 11 in Liverpool. Very soon Phinuit broke out 
with a reference to Mr. Gonner's mother in response 
to Prof. Lodge's request to tell what his mother was 
doing at the time. 

" Ha, Ha ! I'll tell you why it's important, be- 
cause he don't know it himself. I read your thoughts 



136 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

then. I can't generally. Your mother is just this 
minute fixing her hair, putting a thing through her 
hair (indicating) and putting it through her hair 
in a room with a cot in it, up high. Did you know 
she had some trouble with her head? (No.) Long 
distance between you and your mother. She's in an- 
other place She's fixing something to her 

throat and putting on a wrap here, round here, and 
now she has lifted up the lid of a box on a stand. 
I'll go back to your mother.* 

" There's been some news, some correspondence 
reached the large building where your mother is. 
She has had a cold. A young lady is with her, and 
I should think it's a daughter ; a very nice girl. She 
draws somewhat, and needlework and reads a great 
deal. There's a pretty girl with light hair and blu- 
ish eyes. She's speaking to your mother at this 
minute. 

"(Is her hair long or short?) How do you mean? 
It's fuzzy light hair. She's a little pale, sort of smil- 
ing ; nice teeth. Your mother is going out 

Your mother didn't want to go, but they wanted her 
to go, and she made up her mind she would. So she 
went." 

At the next sitting on the same day and in the 

* The reader should remark the following explanation of 
symbols used in the records quoted. Matter in parentheses 
represents statements or actions of the sitter on the occasion 
of an experiment with the medium. Matter in brackets rep- 
resents notes or comments made after the sittings in explana- 
tion of their contents or mode of production. Periods or dots 
in succession represent that something has been omitted by the 
" communicators." Asterisks mean that something in the auto- 
matic writing is undecipherable. 






THE ENGLISH REPORT 137 

evening Phinuit added the following at the very be- 
ginning of his " communications." 

" His mother just as I left was brushing some- 
thing, and had a little thing looking at it. She had 
a frame, a little picture, looking at it. She took it 
up and looked steadily at it and then brushing some- 
thing. That's how I left her. When I first saw her 
she was fixing her hair, and had something on the 
top of it, and was fixing something around her 
throat, and she took up a pencil and wrote something. 
But just as I left she was looking at a picture and 
brushing something." 

The report states what actually occurred in Lon- 
don while the experiment was going on simulta- 
neously in Liverpool, the arrangements having been 
carried out according to the directions of Mr. Gonner 
through his sister, Miss Gonner. The mother had 
no trouble with her head, so far as known. The lady 
who went out with Mrs. Gonner in London was cor- 
rectly named as Annie and rightly described, accord- 
ing to Mr. Gonner's statements. With this lady Mrs. 
Gonner decided to take a drive round the park. 
"The drive round the park on a wet Saturday morn- 
ing, though sufficiently incongruous to astonish even 
the cabman, was unfortunately a passive kind of 
performance to select; but considering the absence of 
every kind of information or clue to the reason for 
doing anything, the wonder is that anything what- 
ever was done. Miss Ledlie (the lady with Mrs. 
Gonner) reports that after Miss Gonner left the 
house she and Mrs. Gonner decided what to do, and a 
vehicle was sent for. Just about 11 she ran up 



138 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

stairs to see if Mrs. Gonner was ready, and saw her 
come out of her room to a landing cupboard, take a 
box out of it, put it on a ledge, open it and take out 
a muff, very much as described by Phinuit half an 
hour later. She had her cloak and things on then, 
and the cloak is troublesome to hook, so that there 
would be a good deal of apparently fixing things 
round the neck. The taking up and looking at the 
photograph would almost certainly be done before 
going out, though it was not actually seen." " On 
her dressing table there stands a small photograph 
of my (Mr. Gonner's) father, which she very fre- 
quently takes up and looks at intently. There is a 
wooden half-tester in her room, which might con- 
ceivably be called a ' cot.' " Mrs. Gonner was not 
seen to take up a pencil and write, nor to brush 
anything. 

Prof. Lodge tried a " clairvoyant " experiment 
which consisted of a little box with some letters in it, 
picked at random and without Prof. Lodge's knowl- 
edge of what they were. The experiment was a fail- 
ure, as the two correctly named letters were expli- 
cable by chance. Another experiment to tell the con- 
tents of a bottle was also a failure. It was said to 
contain salicylate of soda, but in reality contained 
sulphate of iron, wrapped up so that it could not be 
seen and was unknown to the sitter. 

There were some curious allusions to Prof. Lodge's 
Uncle Robert, alleging that he was lying on a couch 
at the time and describing two or three articles in 
the house. But while it was the uncle's habit to lie 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 139 

on a couch a great deal he was not doing it at the 
time and the articles named were not as described. 

At another time Phinuit said that the wife of a sit- 
ter was at that moment brushing her dress, a fact 
which turned out to be true, and that his son was ill, 
also true. 

There are many instances of correct diagnosis and 
hits at physical troubles in various persons not sit- 
ters, but they were incidental and made in the midst 
of other matter which it would be too perplexing to 
sift. Some idea of these hits can be obtained from 
those I have narrated, and taken collectively they 
seem to have some indication of knowledge acquired 
in some way not normal. 

(b) Facts relevant to spirit agency. I do not 
mean by " relevancy " that the facts prove such an 
agency as is mentioned, but only that the facts 
might conceivably be told by discarnate spirits, if 
they communicated, as they often represented what 
might naturally be mentioned in proof of identity. 
Many incidents purporting to have this origin seem 
unnatural for it, but being associated with such as 
are appropriate must be narrated in that connection. 
Whatever the explanation, I shall give them as they 
are. 

In Prof. Lodge's first sitting a curious mistake 
was made in referring to an " Uncle William," taken 
to refer to Prof. Lodge's uncle, which was false, but 
it was later corrected to Mrs. Lodge's father. He 
was correctly described at this first sitting, and was 
dead. More striking and correct was the name and 



140 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

relationship of an Aunt Ann with a description of her 
character. Phinuit said that this aunt was on the 
mother's side, and that she had cared for Prof. 
Lodge when a child after his mother's death, and 
asked if he did not have " a little old-fashioned pic- 
ture of her, on a small card," referring to the aunt. 
Prof. Lodge replied that he had, and apparently the 
aunt " communicated " immediately and referred to 
her care of her nephew and the little means that she 
had. She mentioned as caring now for a deceased 
child of Prof. Lodge, he having lost two very young 
children, and said it was a boy, after first saying that 
it was a girl. She then claimed to have had trouble 
in her chest and stomach and that she died from that 
illness, mentioning inflammation. 

Prof. Lodge remarks that all this is true of the 
aunt except the immediate cause of her death was 
an operation for cancer of the breast. 

At the next sitting, after two names had been 
given correctly, Mrs. Lodge asked Phinuit to tell 
her about her father. Some rambling statements of 
and unevidential character were made and Phinuit 
broke out : " He says you have got something of 
his. He says if you had this it would help him. He 
has difficulty in coming back. It's a little ornament 
with his hair in." (Mrs. Lodge here ran up stairs 
to get the locket referred to.) " He passed out long 
ago; she was but a little thing." Presently his 
name, Alexander, was given and the statement that 
the father had given the locket to Mrs. Lodge's 
mother and that she gave it to Mrs. Lodge. All this 
was correct, except that it is not known whose hair 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 141 

is in the locket. Mrs. Lodge was only a fortnight 
old when her father died. There immediately fol- 
lowed a very striking " message " regarding his 
death. Phinuit said : " He had an illness and 
passed out with it. He tried to speak to Mary, his 
wife, and stretched out his hand to her, but couldn't 
reach and fell and passed away. That's the last 
thing he remembers in this mortal body." He 
added a statement about taking some medicine, the last 
he took, and then that something had happened to 
his right leg and it was caused by a fall, affecting the 
leg below the knee. It was also stated that it gave 
him pain at times. 

The facts were that Mrs. Lodge's father had his 
health broken by tropical travel and yellow fever, 
and his heart was weak. A severe illness of his wife 
was a great strain on him. As she was recuperating 
he entered her room one day, quite faint, half- 
dressed and holding a handkerchief to his mouth, 
which was full of blood. " He stretched out his hand 
to her, removed the handkerchief and tried to speak, 
but only gasped and fell on the floor. Very soon he 
died." He had broken his leg below the knee once 
by falling down the hold, and in certain states of the 
weather it afterward pained him. 

Phinuit made the further statement that he had 
had trouble with his teeth ; that he wore a sort of uni- 
form with " big bright buttons " ; that he traveled a 
good deal, and that he got the locket on one of his 
journeys. A little later it was intimated that he was 
a Captain. The facts were that during his married 
life he had been troubled much with toothache, his 



142 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

position was that of Captain in the merchant service ; 
he traveled a great deal as a consequence, though his 
travel was mentioned before the statement was made 
that he was a Captain. The locket was obtained on 
one of his voyages. 

A question in regard to the "Uncle William," the 
step-father, brought out from Phinuit : " Never saw 
a spirit so happy and contented. He was depressed 
in life — had the blues like old Harry, but he's quite 
contented now. He had trouble here (prodding 
himself in lower part of stomach and me over blad- 
der). Trouble there, in bowels or something. Had 
pain in head, right eye funny. Pain down here, 
abdomen, stoppage urine. Had an operation and 
after it was worse, and with it passed out." At a 
later sitting his full name, William Tomkinson, was 
given, and it was stated that he was an old man with 
white hair and beard, but without mustache, and that 
he had passed out with trouble with the bladder. 

Prof. Lodge says of the incidents : " The step- 
father used to have severe fits of depression, more 
than ordinary blues. His right eye had a droop in 
it. He had stone in bladder, great trouble with 
urine, and was operated on towards the end by Sir 
Henry Thompson." 

On the second day after at a sitting in the evening 
the incidents of Mrs. Lodge's father were told, some 
of them a little more definitely, especially the ref- 
erence to the hurting of his leg by a fall " through 
a hole in the boat," and his name in full, as Alexan- 
der Marshall, which was correct, was given. Then 
mention was made of " two Florences," with the state- 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 143 

ment that one paints and that the other does not; 
that one is married and the other is not, and that 
the reference was to the " one doesn't paint who is 
married." It happened that Prof. Lodge had two 
cousins by the name of Florence, one married and 
abroad, as indicated in the " communications " and 
who does not paint, and one who paints and is not mar- 
ried. In connection with the former, Phinuit had 
said that she had a friend, Whiteman. This was all 
unintelligible to Prof. Lodge, except the names of 
his cousins and their relation to painting and mar- 
riage, and he inquired of one of them to find that she 
had a lady friend by the name of Mrs. Whytehead, 
recently married, and he conjectures that the allu- 
sion to something as the matter with her head was a 
confusion in Phinuit's mind by the termination of 
the name. Otherwise the allusions were all correct. 

This incident was followed by some pertinent 
" messages " from a Mr. E., well known to Prof. 
Lodge, and a man well known in Europe. The 
facts stated were private and said to be intended to 
prove the " communicator's " identity. They were 
absolutely unknown to Prof. Lodge and had to be 
verified through a common friend. The chief inter- 
est in them is the recognition of the purpose of 
" communicating " the facts, since the man was one 
who appreciated the problem before his death and 
was a co-worker in psychic research. 

The next incident should be told in Prof. Lodge's 
own language and occurred soon after the sittings 
began. 

It happened," says Prof. Lodge, " that an uncle 



a 



144 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of mine in London, now quite an old man, and one of 
a surviving three out of a very large family, had a 
twin brother who died some twenty or more years ago. 
I interested him generally in the subject, and wrote 
to ask if he would lend me some relic of this brother. 
By morning post on a certain day I received a curious 
old gold watch, which this brother had worn and been 
fond of; and that same morning, no one in the house 
having seen it or knowing anything about it, I 
handed it to Mrs. Piper when in a state of trance. 

" I was told almost immediately that it had be- 
longed to one of my uncles — one that had been men- 
tioned before as having died from the effects of a 
fall — one that had been very fond of Uncle Robert, 
the name of the survivor — that the watch was now 
in possession of this same Uncle Robert, with whom 
he was anxious to communicate. After some diffi- 
culty, and many wrong attempts, Dr. Phinuit caught 
the name, Jerry, short for Jeremiah, and said em- 
phatically, as if a third person was speaking, ' This 
is my watch, and Robert is my brother, and I am 
here. Uncle Jerry, my watch.' All this at the first 
sitting on the very morning the watch had arrived 
by post, no one but myself and a short-hand clerk 
who happened to have been introduced for the first 
time at this sitting by me, and whose antecedents are 
well known to me, being present. 

"Having thus got ostensibly into communication 
through some means or other with what purported to 
be a deceased relative, whom I had, indeed, known 
slightly in his later years of blindness, but of whose 
early life I knew nothing, I pointed out to him that 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 145 

to make Uncle Robert aware of his presence it would 
be well to recall trivial details of their boyhood, all 
of which I would faithfully report. 

" He quite caught the idea, and proceeded during 
several successive sittings ostensibly to instruct Dr. 
Phinuit to mention a number of little things such 
as would enable his brother to recognise him. 

" References to his blindness, illness, and main 
facts of his life were comparatively useless from my 
point of view; but these details of boyhood, two- 
thirds of a century ago, were utterly and entirely 
out of my ken. My father was one of the younger 
members of the family, and only knew these brothers 
as men. 

" * Uncle Jerry ' recalled episodes such as swim- 
ming the creek when they were boys together, and 
running some risk of getting drowned; killing a cat 
in Smith's field; the possession of a small rifle, and 
of a long peculiar skin, like a snake-skin, which he 
thought was now in the possession of Uncle Robert. 

" All these facts have been more or less completely 
verified. But the interesting thing is that this twin 
brother, from whom I got the watch, and with whom I 
was thus in a sort of communication, could not remem- 
ber them all. He recollected something about swim- 
ming the creek, though he himself had merely looked 
on. He had a distinct recollection of having had the 
snake-skin, and of the box in which it was kept, 
though he does not know where it is now. But he al- 
together denied killing the cat, and could not recall 
Smith's field. 

" His memory, however, is decidedly failing him, 



146 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

and he was good enough to write to another brother, 
Frank, now living in Cornwall, an old sea captain, 
and ask if he had any better remembrance of certain 
facts — of course not giving any inexplicable rea- 
sons for asking. The result of this inquiry was 
triumphantly to vindicate the existence of Smith's 
field as a place near their home ; where they used to 
play, in Barking, Essex ; and the killing of the cat by 
another brother was also recollected; while of the 
swimming of the creek, near a mill-race, full details 
were given, Frank and Jerry being the heroes of that 
foolhardy episode. 

" Some of the other facts given I have not been 
able to get verified. Perhaps there are as many un- 
verified as verified. And some things appear, so far 
as I can make out, to be false. One little thing I 
could verify myself, and it is good, inasmuch as no 
one is likely to have had any recollection, even if 
they had any knowledge, of it. Phinuit told me to 
take the watch out of its case (it was the old-fash- 
ioned turnip variety) and examine it in a good light 
afterwards, and I should see some nicks near the 
handle which Jerry said he had cut into it with his 
knife. 

" Some faint nicks are there. I had never had 
the watch out of its case before ; being, indeed, care- 
ful neither to finger it myself nor to let anyone else 
finger it. 

" I never let Mrs. Piper in her waking state see the 
watch till quite towards the end of the time, when I 
purposely left it lying on my desk while she came 
out of the trance. Before long she noticed it, with 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 147 

natural curiosity, evidently becoming conscious of 
its existence then for the first time." 

Prof. Lodge received a number of specific incidents 
well calculated in their nature to prove supernormal 
knowledge and purporting to come from the father 
of a personal friend by the name of Wilson. Some 
of the facts Prof. Lodge knew and some he did not. 
To test the telepathic hypothesis, which, he thought, 
ought to be correct in what he knew and might be 
false in what he did not know, he wrote to Africa 
to make inquiries. The reply showed that the 
facts which he did not know were not true of Mr. 
Wilson's father, whose name was given by Phinuit 
as James, when it should have been George. In a 
footnote, however, Prof. Lodge says that " James " 
was the name of Mr. Wilson's grandfather, and that 
the facts " would have had a truer ring if they had 
purported to come from the grandfather." 

At a sitting held under the supervision of Prof. 
Lodge a gentleman friend by the name of Mr. G. 
H. Rendall was introduced as Roberts, and during 
the course of the experiment Mr. Rendall placed in 
Mrs. Piper's hand a locket containing " a miniature 
head, faced by ring of hair, of a first (step) cousin, 
named Agnes, who had died of consumption in 1869. 
The locket remained closed from first to last." Im- 
mediately Mrs. Piper (Phinuit) said that it was con- 
nected with an old friend and gave the name 
Alice, pronouncing it " Aleese," in Phinuit's French. 
When told that the name was not quite right Phin- 
uit said, " it is the cough she remembers — she 
passed out with a cough," and gave the name " An- 



148 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

nese." Mr. Kendall at once said, as if trying a sug- 
gestion, "Agnes. Can't you say Agnes?" Phinuit 
replied : " That is it. Anyese — Anyese," and 
throughout the remainder of the talk kept at the 
French pronunciation, and said that he could " not 
say it quite right." Phinuit continued with much 
unevidential talk and said in the midst of it that 
" she's got greyish eyes, and brown hair," that " she 
passed out with a cough," that " when she passed out 
she lost her flesh — but she looks better now — looks 
more like the picture you have in here — rather 
fleshier," that " there was a book when she was in 
the body connected with you and her — a little book 
and some verses in it," that " she's got a mother in 
the body," that " she has a sister in the body," and 
that " that's her hair in there." Every one of these 
incidents were correct in regard to the person 
named. The only thing that was false was the state- 
ment that she had owned the locket. Mr. Kendall 
had " her Houndell Palmer's Book of Praise, as a 
keepsake." The conversation continued for some 
time with frequent correct incidents mentioned by the 
" communicator," and among them was the statement' 
that her sister had been ill of late, and that the sis- 
ter had married since her own death. Mr. Kendall 
tried a test for telepathy, asking if the " communi- 
cator " could tell what little memento he had of her. 
There was another reference to the book in reply 
and then Mr. Kendall definitely indicated what was 
in his mind by asking if she remembered any little 
thing at table d 9 hote. She could not remember and 
he then said what it was, a little blue vase, but it was 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 149 

not remembered, and the " communicator " went on 
through Phinuit to say that she sent her " love to 
Lu," the name of a friend of Mr. Rendall's cousin 
and whom he had not seen and hardly heard of since 
his cousin's death, in 1869. Amid much confusion 
and error some other true incidents occurred, but not 
complicated enough to quote. 

In a sitting the same evening a number of names 
and incidents were correctly given, but without the 
complexity that makes them especially interesting or 
useful as evidence, except as unlikely due to chance. 

% Incidents in Experiments of Walter Leaf 

I mean to group under this head the sittings and 
experiments that were supervised by Mr. Walter 
Leaf, Litt. D., just as I have treated the previous 
account as under the care of Sir Oliver Lodge. Mr. 
Leaf's introduction to his report calls attention to a 
number of precautions which have to be taken against 
the misinterpretation of real or apparent coincidences 
in the sittings, and I have no space to dwell upon 
them. The reader must go to the original data for 
evidence of the cautiousness with which he approached 
the case and adopted conclusions favorable to some 
supernormal process of acquiring information. 

(a) Facts unevidential of spirit agency. The 
first two sittings in this series were for a Mr. Clarke, 
one of them held in America and the other in Eng- 
land. He very carefully analysed the " communica- 
tions " and the amount of error makes the successes 
pale so that the whole result is dubious. Even the 



150 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

facts in many cases that were treated as possibly sig- 
nificant may be extremely doubtful. 

At the next experiment three sitters were present 
whose names were reserved from publication. The 
first incident in the " communications " has its sig- 
nificance in the mistake, along with successes, that 
represents what was false in fact, but what the sitter 
thought was true. Phinuit almost at once said: 
"You have three sisters and two brothers in the body ; 
an elderly gentleman in the spirit, your father. 
(Right.) 

" One of your brothers has a funny arm, the right 
arm paralysed; very funny (points to place a little 
above the elbow on inside of arm). That is sore, 
it is lame. He can't use his arm, it aches. The lump 
keeps growing." 

The sitter stated that this was a correct descrip- 
tion of her eldest brother, who suffers from writer's 
cramp, which seriously hinders him in his profes- 
sion. There is a lump on the arm which gives him 
pain; but it is significant that it is in fact below the 
elbow, not above it, and the sitter believed it to be 
above the elbow at the time. 

A second brother was described with equal cor- 
rectness and his name, James, given. He was said 
to be funny and hard to get at, stubborn and self- 
willed, but manageable by quiet influence. 

At a sitting by Mrs. Verrall Phinuit referred to a 
living sister and advised care regarding her, as she 
had been ill, and made a half successful attempt at 
the name of her physician, and then said : " I don't 
like his treatment; he gives her quinine. Her sys- 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 151 

tern is full of it." Both Mrs. Verrall and her sister 
denied that she, the sister, had taken quinine, but it 
was subsequently ascertained that she had taken quin- 
ine without knowing it. After some further refer- 
ence to friends and relatives with names given and 
statements making the incidents mixed ones, Phinuit 
made a clear set of statements in reference to a child 
of Mrs. Verrall's. 

" There is a child in the body ; a little stiffness 
— a boy — no, a girl. That leg too. This leg is 
the worst (indicating the left knee). The muscles 
are strained, not lubricated properly. A drawing 
of the muscles ; they are too tight." 

" It is a fact that Mrs. Verrall's baby, a girl, suf- 
fered from want of power in the lower limbs, and 
that the left knee was the worst. But it is not cor- 
rect to say that there was straining or want of lu- 
brication of the muscles of the knee, though the ten- 
dons of the heels were somewhat contracted." 

This was followed up by another singular coinci- 
dence, in which Phinuit said that Mrs. Verrall had 
another child quite bright, and that he would be very 
musical. Mrs. Verrall asked if it was a boy or girl, 
and Phinuit said: "A boy. You have had that 
child's hair fixed peculiarly, but after all it's a girl; 
a girl sure enough, but she looks like a fury." The 
child was a girl, and its hair was badly cut at the 
time, and she looked like a boy. 

(b) Facts relevant to spirit agency. None of 
the incidents in this series of sittings are so impress- 
ive as those of Prof. Lodge. There are traces of 
ordinary mediumistic talk all through, but now and 



152 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

then a complex incident occurs that cannot easily 
be referred to chance, coincidence or guessing. The 
first sitting of the series was, as indicated above, for 
a Mr. Clarke. Until he and Mr. Leaf went out of 
the room and left the " communications " with Mrs. 
Clarke, nothing of a suggestive character occurred. 
But as soon as they had gone out Phinuit mentioned 
an uncle and said he was " in spirit," which was cor- 
rect, and remarked that some one was with him, giv- 
ing the name and relationship to Mrs. Clarke as her 
cousin. He then went on to say: 

" There was something the matter with his heart, 
and with his head. He says it was an accident. He 
wants me to tell you it was an accident. He wants 
you to tell his sisters. There's M. and E. ; they are 
sisters of E. And there is their mother. She suffers 
here (pointing to abdomen). E. told me. His 
mother has been very unhappy about his death. He 
begs you, for God's sake, to tell them that it was an 
accident — that it was his head ; that he was hurt 
there (makes motion of stabbing heart) ; that he had 
inherited it from his father. His father was off his 
mind — you know what I mean — crazy. But the 

others are all right and will be He and his 

father are just trying to take comfort in each other. 
They are a little apart; they are not with the others 
in the spirit." He then sent his love to "Walter, his 
friend, not this Walter," alluding evidently to Mr. 
Walter Leaf in the distinction. But no such friend 
of the " communicator " was known. But Mrs. 
Clarke says in a note : 

" A striking account of my uncle's family in Ger- 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 153 

many. The names and facts are all correct. The 
father was disturbed in his mind for the last three 
years in his life, in consequence of a fall from his 
horse. The son committed suicide in a fit of melan- 
cholia by stabbing his heart, as described. The sis- 
ter referred to as lame was bedridden for 10 years. 
One of the sisters (mentioned by Phinuit previous 
to what has been quoted as "one who paints") is a 
painter by profession. Some few of the facts she 
gave me were unknown to any one out of Germany, 
even to my husband. The more important events 
— my uncle's and aunt's death and my cousin's sui- 
cide, which happened respectively 28, 15 and 12 
years ago — were known to only two persons in Eng- 
land besides my husband." 

Further important " communications " of a coinci- 
dental sort, immediately followed what I have quoted. 
Phinuit said : " Did you know your mother had dread- 
ful headaches? That's the reason she is so nervous. 
E. told me that about his aunt." Mrs. Clarke adds 
in a note that her " mother formerly suffered from 
severe headaches." Then followed a most interesting 
set of episodes, in which Phinuit seemed at his best. 

" Here's M. — not the M. who hurt her ankle, but 
another. She is your aunt. (Is she in the body?) 
No, she is in the spirit. (Did you see her?) Yes, 
she is here, and wants to speak to you. (What does 
she say about her husband?) She says he has 
changed his life since. She does not like it that he 
married again. (Does she like the one whom he mar- 
ried ? ) Oh, she loves her dearly. But she does not like 



154 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

him to have married again so soon. He married her 
sister. Two brothers married sisters. Her husband 
has children now. There are two boys. And there 
are Max and Richard, or Dick, as they call him ; they 
are with your uncle's children. 

"Now what do you think of this? Don't you 
think I can tell you many things? You just ask 
about anybody you like and I'll tell you. (Tell me 
about my childhood.) Shall I tell you how you ran 
away (chuckling) with that man — that boy, I 
mean. You were a little devil to do that. It wor- 
ried your mother almost to death." 

Mrs. Clarke says in her notes : " This is an accu- 
rate description of the family of another uncle. His 
wife died childless, and he soon afterward married 
her sister, by whom he has children. His brother 
had previously married a third sister. 

" When five years old I rambled off with two boys, 
staying hours away from home, an event which in my 
family is jestingly referred to as my running away. 
I had no thought of it when I asked her about my 
childhood." 

When Mr. Clarke and Mr. Leaf returned into the 
room Phinuit repeated the incidents just quoted with 
remarkable accuracy and brevity in a running talk 
that is most interesting and suggestive on any theory. 

The next sitting was for Mrs. A., full name re- 
served from publication. Mr. Frederic W. H. My- 
ers was present taking notes. Immediately follow- 
ing the incident quoted of the brother with a " funny 
arm" (p. 150) came a reference to a "spirit Jo- 
seph " which was not recognised, and then : " Tim- 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 155 

othy is the nearest spirit you have got to you; some 
call him Tim ; he is your father. Timothy was your 
grandfather also. Your father tells me about S. W. 
— stay, I can't get that, I must wait. Your mother 
had trouble in the stomach; she is in the spirit world. 
Your father had trouble in heart and head. Myers' 
father passed away from disease of the heart." 

The notes say : " Except the allusion to * S. W.,' 
which is not recognisable, the above is all true, if the 
8 trouble in heart and head ' be taken to refer to Mr. 
Myers' father, as seems to be intended." 

Then with the reference to a living brother, James, 
not mentioned before, Mr. Myers asked what the 
father, Timothy, was interested in and what he did in 
his " earth life." The reply was : 

" He is interested in the Bible — a clergyman. He 
used to preach. He has a Bible with him, he goes on 
reading and advancing. He is living with your 
mother just the same as on earth. He has been in 
the spirit-world longer than she has. Your mother 
is a little nervous. I can't get her to come near. 
Your father has a graceful, solemn manner, as he 
had on earth. He had trouble with his throat — ir- 
ritation (points to bronchial tubes). The boys used 
to call him Tim at college." 

The note states that these statements are all cor- 
rect, so far as they can be verified. With a refer- 
ence to an unrecognised name and in connection with 
matter on which no notes are given the question was 
asked by Phinuit : " Do you like that picture of your 
father in the hall ? " There was some confusion 
as to whether it was oil or crayon, but it was said 



156 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

apparently not to be a photograph. His dress was 
described to fit more or less the ecclesiastical garb 
which he wore in the oil picture of him which hung 
in Mrs. A's sister's house. Some further coincidental 
matter was given, but was buried up in much that it 
would not pay to quote. 

Mrs. Verrall's sittings were full of pertinent mat- 
ter, but of a type in many cases that requires the 
study of the detailed records. But a few incidents 
are especially interesting and suggest the super- 
normal very clearly. Near the first of the second 
experiment came : " Carrie was sick in the chest 
when she passed away — consumption. She says she 
is happy, so is her mother. Well, Carrie and her 
mother were not congenial in the body, but they un- 
derstand one another now. Carrie had a little sister 
who passed out as an infant." Mrs. Verrall remarks 
of the incidents: 

" The only friend of the name Carrie who is dead, 
the wife of a cousin, died of inflammation of the 
lungs. Her mother died at her birth and her step- 
mother was by her believed to be her own mother, and 
as a child she used to reproach herself for not loving 
her as a child ought to love its mother. There was 
an infant sister, the child of the step-mother, which 
died at two months old. This I have never known, 
at least this is my impression. The husband of Car- 
rie did not know it, but found the event recorded in 
the family Bible. I knew Carrie very well, and it is, 
of course, possible that she may have mentioned the 
baby sister to me, but I had so little knowledge of 
the fact that I thought the medium's statement a mis- 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 157 

take, and neither my mother, who was very intimate 
with Carrie, nor my sister knew of the * infant sis- 
ter.' " 

Another set of very interesting statements was 
made by Phinuit a little later in the experiment, and 
after some isolated hits of significance. What I wish 
to quote is very complicated and gets its importance 
from that fact: 

" Who was the teacher ? There was a grandfather 
lame, very lame, rheumatism; the father's father, 
lame, crutches. You know Henry, he sends his love. 
There are two Henrys, one the father's side, one on 
the mother's. The two Henrys came to another gen- 
tleman by mistake. One belongs to the lame grand- 
father, his son; the other to the mother; not her son 
nor brother — father, perhaps, or grandfather. 
Your grandfather had a sister Susan. The other 
Henry — there is an old-fashioned picture with a 
collar turned down, hair old-fashioned way — a 
painting done by one of the family, not you. Ken- 
yon, what's her name? Your grandmother's sister, 
no, grandmother was a Wilson, no, Williams. Ke- 
lon, Keley; that's it. What relation is she?" Mrs. 
Verrall, replied : " My uncle married a Mrs. Keeley." 
Phinuit continued : " Oh, what a mixture — double 
marriages! Your aunt married your uncle; I mean, 
she was your aunt after she married him. Mrs. Kee- 
ley was the second wife and had a first husband. 
George, that's the brother of the uncle's first wife. 
I like the teacher. (Who?) Music teacher; your 
aunt, father's sister. She is a lady; she is living." 

Mrs. Verrall confirms the incidents in the follow- 



158 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ing manner : " Grandfather lame ; this is true of 
my father's father. But he never had rheumatism; 
his lameness was due to an accident. ' Henry ;' I had 
an Uncle Henry whom I never knew, a son of the 
lame grandfather. There is a portrait of him by 
his mother, which she valued very much. It shows 
him as a young man, a grown-up looking boy. The 
other Henry was an uncle of my mother's. I have 
written to ask if my grandfather had a sister Su- 
san." Subsequently Mrs. Verrall writes : " I hear 
that my grandfather had a sister Susan. She was 
born in 1791, and after her marriage went out to 
Canada and lived near Hamilton, Ontario. But a 
son remained in England. Members of my grand- 
father's family have kept up communication with 
some of my relations, though not with our branch, 
notably with the uncle who married a Mrs. Keeley. 
The uncle, Henry, whose portrait was described to 
me went out to Canada to join the Susan branch. It 
is certainly very astonishing that Dr. Phinuit should 
know a fact of which I certainly never knew. My 
grandfather had entirely broken with all his family 
except a sister, Mary, and never mentioned them to 
me. This information is derived from papers in my 
grandmother's handwriting. My father knew noth- 
ing of this Susan. 

" George was the name of the brother of my un- 
cle's first wife. I find that he is still alive, but is 
now called Jasper, his other name. I have lately 
heard a great deal about Jasper, but had no idea he 
was the George of whom I used to hear from my 
cousin, John Merrifield, when we were both children. 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 159 

My father's sister taught music, certainly; possibly 
painting, too." 

The extraordinary character of the incidents in 
this case, I think, will strike every reader, and it may 
perhaps be too strong a verdict to say, as intimated 
above, that there were none in this series of experi- 
ments equal to some of Prof. Lodge's. This set of 
incidents certainly runs in very close rivalry to the 
significance of his. 

In a long sitting at which Mrs. Herbert Leaf was 
present, introduced as "Miss Thompson," a large 
number of incidents were correct, but they did not 
have so much psychological complexity of detail as 
those I have just quoted, though of that pertinent 
character which makes them strongly evidential of 
the supernormal and relevant to spirit agency. It 
would take too much space to indicate their impor- 
tance by quoting them. A similar experiment by a 
Mr. Pye exhibits the same type of result. The rec- 
ord then shows two sittings which were failures and 
left a bad impression upon the sitters. 

The general summary of both series of sittings 
from which the quotations have been taken contains 
abbreviated accounts of experiments whose full de- 
tails were not published, and there are many impor- 
tant incidents for both types of phenomena, the un- 
evidential of spirit agency and the relevant. One 
by Mr. Oscar Browning contains incidents of a strik- 
ing character and explicable by either hypothesis. 
One also by Miss X. (Goodrich-Freer), author of 
Essays in Psychical Research, is especially rich in 
evidence of the supernormal, some of it relevant and 



160 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

some of it unevidential of spirit agency. It is so 
interesting that I shall quote the whole record : 

" Miss X. was introduced, veiled, to the medium 
in the trance state, immediately after her arrival at 
Mr. Myers' house. She was at once recognized and 
named. ' You are a medium ; you write when you 
don't want to. You have got Mr. E.'s influence 
about you. This is Miss X. that I told you about.' 
She was subsequently addressed by her Christian 
name, one of similar sound being first used, but cor- 
rected immediately." 

" A large part of the statements made at this and 
the following sittings were correct, but in nearly all 
cases of so private and personal a nature that it is 
impossible to publish them. Only fragments, there- 
fore, can be given, with proper names omitted. But 
these sittings were perhaps the most successful and 
convincing of the whole series. 

" You know that military-looking gentleman with 
the big coat on and the funny buttons on the pads 
here, on the collar. It is some one very near you in 
the spirit." This is a correct description, so far as 
it goes, of a near relation. 

" Howells speaks ; he tells me he knows the Mar- 
tins, your friends; they know one of my books." 
These names were not recognized. 

"You see flowers sometimes? (What is my fa- 
vorite flower? There is a spirit who would know.) 
Pansies. No, delicate pink roses. You have them 
about you, spiritually as well as physically." Miss 
X. has on a certain day every month a present of 



THE ENGLISH REPORT 161 

delicate pink roses. She frequently has hallucina- 
tory visions of flowers. 

" There is an old lady in the spirit wearing a cap 
who is fond of you — your grandmother. She is 
the mother of the clergyman's wife's mother. (Not 
correct.) She wears a lace collar and a big brooch, 
bluish-grey eyes, dark hair turned greyish, with a 
black ribbon running through it; rather prominent 
nose and peaked chin ; named Anne." This is a cor- 
rect description of a friend of Miss X., whom she was 
in the habit of calling Granny. 

"Dr. Phinuit described an entertainment at which 
Miss X. had been present, her position in the room, 
the appearance of her companion, including a 
marked personal peculiarity, and its cause, giving 
the Christian name of the same friend, and the sub- 
ject of their conversation, and the circumstance of 
Miss X.'s return home — all with absolute correct- 
ness, except as to time, which was said to have been 
' last evening,' whereas it was the evening before." 

At the next sitting " Prof. Charles Richet and Mr. 
Walter Leaf were also present; the latter only a few 
minutes at the beginning." 

"Miss X. was told that her mother's sister was 
named Sarah. It was said that she was in the body, 
but this was corrected to ' in the spirit ' after a ques- 
tion. Her brothers' names were given as G — , A — , 
W — , A — , B — , correctly, all but B — , being very 
common ; but in the case of A — , and B — only at 
the second attempt, John and Walter having been 
first given instead. W — was the name of a brother 



162 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

who died in infancy, and whom Miss X. had never 
known. Miss X. at first denied that the name was 
correct, having usually heard of him as H — , but 
afterward remembered that W — was correct. She 
was further told rightly that A — was an artist, and 
B — the handsomest of the family. A medallion 
which she showed was stated to be given by a friend 
whose very rare Christian and surname were rightly 
obtained, the one after hesitation, but with no false 
shots, the other at the second attempt.'' No record 
of the third sitting is given. 

A curious fact is connected with the reference to 
"Mr. E." and the statement that Miss X. had been 
mentioned before. This Mr. E., well known in life 
to both Prof. James and Dr. Hodgson, had pur- 
ported to communicate in sittings in America and 
had said there that he had communicated through 
Miss X., giving the name correctly with the excep- 
tion of one letter. On November 29th, in a sitting 
with Mr. Myers, the same statement that had been 
made in America was made to Mr. Myers and the 
same mistake in the name committed. It was on 
December 7th following that Miss X. had her sit- 
ting. The incident, which might be interpreted as 
a " communication " through Miss X. from Mr. E., 
is unpublished. 

3. Failures, Errors, and Irrelevant Incidents 

I shall not summarise details of failures and er- 
rors, because errors are not opposed to any theory 
when the correct facts are not explicable by chance 
or guessing. All that I need do in this section will 






THE ENGLISH REPORT 163 

be to recognise that the true incidents were often 
given in such a mass of error as to make it neces- 
sary to discount their value. Some sittings were 
entire failures and have all the appearance of the or- 
dinary medium's talk and associational reproduc- 
tions. Names were often given in a manner to sug- 
gest guessing and " fishing," and even though they 
were strikingly right their significance had to be 
sceptically received or wholly rejected. The inci- 
dents that were wholly false in many instances, as re- 
lated to the sitter, were often as detailed and as 
probable inherently as any that were true, and if the 
contrast between them and those that were quite true 
had been less, the problem of their import would 
have been more suggestive. As it is, this is inter- 
esting enough. But they do not, in fact, affect the 
inexplicability of the complex true facts by any ordi- 
nary hypotheses. 

As illustration of dubious matter on a large scale, 
the sittings with Mr. Wilson seem to have been full 
of error, very little comparatively being true, though 
what was true seems to have been significant. Mr. 
Clarke's sittings also were associated with much 
that was false or irrelevant, especially in relation to 
himself. Mrs. Clarke's incidents, as we have seen 
above (p. 152), were better. Professor Macalis- 
ter's sitting was one of the worst and he spoke of the 
failure in strong and uncomplimentary language. 
He thought it a case of hystero-epilepsy and that 
Mrs. Piper was wide enough awake to profit by sug- 
gestions. He mentions several instances of Phinuit's 
statements that support such an interpretation. He 



164 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

thought Mrs. Piper was not anaesthetic in the trance, 
a conclusion that is contradicted by the general opin- 
ion of others and by the severe tests to which Mrs. 
Piper has been subjected for determining this very 
matter. The anaesthesia is not necessary for ex- 
cluding suggestions and guessing, but these may be 
favored by its presence. The sitting also of Mr. 
Barkworth was practically a failure. He thought 
the case not more than one " of the ordinary thought 
reading kind," putting aside the experiments of oth- 
ers and treating seriously such coincidences as he 
found in his one sitting. Miss Alice Johnson's sit- 
ting, though associated with much success, was 
thought to be " open to the suspicion of systematic 
guessing." Those of Prof, and Mrs. Sidgwick were 
not so strikingly successful as some others, though 
there were decided coincidences in them suggesting 
a telepathic explanation, and only a telepathic ex- 
planation. 



CHAPTER VI 

dr. Hodgson's first report 

Dr. Hodgson's first report takes up several ques- 
tions which were not discussed fully in the English 
report. He gives a lengthy account of some pecu- 
liarities of the trance and of some tests to determine 
the existence of the trance and of anaesthesia. The 
history of the Phinuit " control " and the hypothesis 
of fraud are discussed and the latter dismissed from 
further consideration in the case. The spiritistic 
hypothesis is regarded as insufficiently supported by 
the evidence to assure its acceptance. There remains, 
then, for this chapter a summary of the facts which 
sustain the existence of supernormal powers in Mrs. 
Piper. In giving this summary, however, I shall not 
distinguish the incidents by the class differences by 
which they have been marked in the preceding chapter. 
I shall leave this task to the reader, as it will not have 
any further importance for this book. 

Many of the accounts in this report do not repre- 
sent verbatim or stenographic statements of what oc- 
curred at the sittings, but depend upon the memories 
of the sitters. They would have been much better 
for the scientific treatment of the facts, if they had 
been more perfectly recorded. But many accounts 
were so reported and the summary of this report must 
place its stress upon the best accounts, though some 
of those not fully reported have that kind of confirm- 

165 



166 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ation that eliminates a too rigid scepticism based upon 
the supposition of mal-observation and defective 
memories. I shall select cases also with reference to 
the difficulty of supposing fraud to account for them, 
though I consider it as excluded in fact. 

I quote first the records of a Miss W., known to 
Dr. Hodgson, who was obliged to conceal her identity 
in his report. She had many sittings with Mrs. 
Piper and made careful and very critical accounts of 
them. The most complicated incident was the fol- 
lowing, which came in response to a request made 
that the " communicator " write Miss W. a letter 
through Phinuit's dictation to another sitter and have 
it mailed to her by this person. Miss W.'s account is 
as follows: 

" On November 16th, 1886, Dr. Phinuit told me 
that T. (Miss W.'s deceased friend) was dictating a 
letter to me. ' How will you address it?' I asked. 
' T. knows your address and will give it to the medi- 
um.' November 29th, a friend, who had been sitting 
with Mrs. Piper, brought me word that the promised 
letter had been mailed to — 

Miss Nellie Wilson, 

Care David Wilson, 

Reading, Mass. 

" By applying at the post-office at Reading I was 
able to obtain the letter. I alter the names, but these 
points may be noted : 

" 1. My surname is given correctly. 

" 2. I have a cousin, David Wilson, of whose 
relationship and friendship T. was well aware. His 






DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 167 

home, however, has always been in New York. 

" 3. Reading was my home during my childhood 
and youth, but I removed from it thirteen years ago. 
I knew T. only subsequent to that removal. 

" 4. While living there I wrote my name with the 
diminutive, Nellie, but since then have preferred to 
write my baptismal name Ella, or merely the initial 
E. T. was wont to use the initials merely. 

"At my next sitting, November 30th, I inquired 
about this mongrel address. ' T. was not strong 
enough,' said Phinuit, ' to direct where the letter 
should be sent, but he thought your cousin David 
would attend to your getting it. Your other friends 
here helped us on the rest of the address.' ('But 
they would not tell you to send it to Reading.') 
'Yes, they did. It was Mary told us that.' ' Non- 
sense,' said I, thinking of a sister of that name. ' Not 
Mary in the body; Mary in the spirit.' ('But I 
have no such friend.') ' Yes, you have. It was Mary 
L. — Mary E. — Mary E. Parker told us that.' I 
then recalled a little playmate of that name, a next 
door neighbor, who moved away from Reading when 
I was ten years old, and of whose death I learned a 
few years later. I had scarcely thought of her for 
twenty years. The E. in the name I have not 
verified." 

The remarkably complicated character of these in- 
cidents is apparently inexplicable on any theory but 
the most obvious, and illustrates the supernormal very 
clearly. Miss W. adds another incident of interest. 
" T. was a western man, and the localism of using like 
as a conjunction clung to him, despite my frequent 



168 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

correction, all his life. At my sitting on December 
16th, 1886, he remarked, ' If you could see it like 
I do.' Forgetful for the instant of the changed con- 
ditions, I promptly repeated, s As I do.' 'Ah,' came 
the response, ' that sounds natural. That sounds like 
old times.' " 

" March 1st, 1888, he requested : ' Throw off this 
rug,' referring to a loose fur-lined cloak which I wore. 
I noted the word as a singular designation for such a 
garment, and weeks after recalled that he had once, 
while living, spoken of it in the same way as I threw 
it over him on the lounge." 

" March 2nd, 1887, I was asked by my mother to 
inquire the whereabouts of two silver cups, heirlooms, 
which she had misplaced. Said Dr. Phinuit, ' They 
are in your house, in a room higher up than your 
sleeping room, in what looks to me the back part of 
the house, but very likely I am turned round. You'll 
find there a large chest filled with clothing, and at 
the very bottom of the chest are the cups. Annie 
(my mother's name) placed them there and will re- 
member it.' Returning home I went to a room on the 
third floor at the front of the house, but remotest 
from the stairway, found the chest (of which I knew), 
and the contents (of which I was ignorant) both as 
described, but no silver. Reporting the message to 
my mother, I learned that she had at one time kept 
the cups in that chest, but more recently had removed 
them." 

" February 11th, 1887, my sister L. wished me to 
ask Phinuit where she should find her missing card- 
plate. To be thoroughly explicit, I took her calling- 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 169 

card with me and placed it in Mrs. Piper's hand, in- 
quiring, ' Where is the plate from which this is en- 
graved?' Phinuit replied, ' You will find it in a box 
with a brush and a bottle. The box is in the house 
where you live, in a drawer under something that looks 
like a cupboard or closet or something of that sort. 
There are soft things cluttered up in the drawer.' L. 
and I searched together all possible places, and finally 
concluded that ' the cupboard or closet ' might be the 
stationary washstand in her bedroom which is set into 
a recess with shelves above and drawers below. The 
second of these drawers, of whose contents I knew 
nothing, we found filled with loose pieces of woolen 
and muslin, and under these pieces a small box. The 
box contained the specified box and bottle, but in- 
stead of L.'s card-plate her stencil-plate. We subse- 
quently wondered that the mention of brush and bot- 
tle had not forewarned us of this mistake, but it had 
not." 

In both these instances where the sitter and other 
living persons did not know the facts they were not 
correctly given, and what was known seems to have 
been correctly given. They strongly suggest a large 
telepathy, when that process is once admitted to ex- 
plain any facts, conscious or subconscious. Clairvoy- 
ance did not answer the question, and if clairvoyance 
be admitted into the case at all it would have been 
natural to have supposed that it would have found the 
articles. It failed just at the point in which living 
minds were as ignorant of the facts as Phinuit seems 
to have been. 

" March 15th," continues Miss W., " T. observed, 



170 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

' This medium is good and true. I am glad to say 
that because I used to think she was a fraud. Do 
you remember ?' ' No, I didn't know you ever said 
so,' thinking only of communications received through 
her. 8 Why, yes, last summer, when you sent her 
a lock of hair. Don't you remember?' I then re- 
called that during T.'s fatal illness in June, 1886, I 
had won his reluctant consent to send Mrs. Piper a 
lock of his hair. I first heard of her at that time, 
and faintly hoped that a clairvoyant might diagnose 
a malady which physicians had failed to reach. The 
diagnosis proved worthless, and T. had freely charac- 
terised the whole thing as trickery and fraud. I have 
never mentioned that correspondence to Mrs. Piper, 
and since I wrote her from a distant city she is not 
likely to have associated it with me." 

Even if the correspondence had been so associated 
this fact would not account for the mention of his 
previous belief regarding Mrs. Piper. Her narrative 
continues : 

" The scepticism of one B., with whom he had 
much in common, had seemed a matter of concern to 
T. He spoke of it November 26th, 1886. ' I re- 
member how we used to talk about this (spirit control) 
and how set against it B. was — like a wall. He 
thinks so yet.' December 16th, 1886, he again in- 
troduced the matter, saying, 6 1 notice your father 
has a letter from B. How strongly he holds his old 
notions. He's determined not to admit anything, isn't 
he?' The letter, whose contents were correctly sum- 
marised, was received by my father that very morn- 
ing. I did not know of its arrival until my return 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 171 

home after this sitting. In July, 1887, B. visited 
my father and the two had a sitting with Mrs. Piper. 
At my next visit, August 5th, T. thus spoke of it: 
1 1 have seen B. He seems changed and so inquisitive. 
I do not remember him so. But he seemed to think 
me different.' I learned afterward from my father 
that B.'s conversation had been a bombardment of 
questions. 

" On one occasion my mother went with my father 
to Mrs. Piper's. On my next visit, August 15th, 
1887, T. spoke of it with pleasure, but added: ' This 
seemed strange. A little while after she was here I 
heard her say to your father, ' It did not really seem 
like T.' It was on the piazza that she said it. I 
verified this on reaching home. Nothing of the sort 
had been said to me. 

" January 5th, 1888, I was told, ' Here is some- 
body who says he is your grandfather. He is tall, 
wears glasses, and is smooth-shaven.' ('Which 
grandfather?') 6 He gives his name F.' ('Yes, it 
must be my grandfather F., if smooth-shaven'). 
'Well, it is. But do you mean that your grandfather 
E. wears a beard?' (' Yes.') ' I think you must be 
mistaken.' ( ' No, I am sure that he did.' ) * I never 
see him so, and I see him often.' My grandfather E. 
died before my birth, but I felt sure that he had been 
described to me as full-bearded, like his son. But 
my father, when appealed to, disappointed me. ' No 
you are wrong,' he said. ' I am like him in figure and 
features, but not in cut of beard. He was always 
smooth-shaven.' " 

There were three prophecies recorded. One was 



172 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

from a deceased friend giving her name and saying 
that another friend of Miss W.'s, giving his name, 
would marry soon. The " communicator " was the 
deceased wife of the person named, her surviving hus- 
band. Miss W. exclaimed that it was preposterous, 
and would not believe that it was her friend that was 
communicating. But the prediction was insisted on 
and Miss W. had finally to admit that the communica- 
tions were characteristic of her friend, but attached no 
importance to the prediction. But the prophesied 
marriage occurred in a few months. 

The last prediction is very interesting and should 
be quoted in full. Miss W. says : "In the spring of 
1888, an acquaintance, S., was suffering torturing 
disease. There was no hope of relief, and only dis- 
tant prospect of release. A consultation of physicians 
predicted continued physical suffering and probably 
mental decay, continuing perhaps through a series of 
years. S.'s daughter, worn with anxiety and care, 
was in danger of breaking in health. ' How can I 
get her away for a little rest ? ' I asked Dr. Phinuit, 
May 24th, 1888. ' She will not leave her father,' was 
the reply, ' but his suffering is not for long. The 
doctors are wrong about that. There will be a change 
soon, and he will pass out of the body before the 
summer is over.' His death occurred in June, 1888." 

There have been many such prophecies at various 
sittings, some of them much more complicated than 
these, and whatever theory be adopted to explain them 
it will not be telepathy. 

I shall next recur to some incidents in the sittings 
of Dr. Hodgson. It should be remembered that he 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 173 

was a native of Australia, graduated at the Univer- 
sity of Melbourne, and afterwards came to England, 
where he had been Lecturer at Cambridge University 
before he was sent to India to investigate Madame 
Blavatsky. He had come to this country for the first 
time about a fortnight before his first sitting with 
Mrs. Piper. He was introduced, as said above, by 
Prof. James. 

At this first sitting, after two or three correct hits 
about members of the family, " Phinuit mentioned the 
name i Fred.' I said it might be my cousin. s He 
says you went to school together. He goes on jump- 
ing frogs, and laughs. He says he used to get the 
better of you. He had convulsive movements before 
his death struggles. He went off in a sort of spasm. 
You were not there.' " 

Dr. Hodgson states in a note : " My cousin Fred 
far excelled any other person that I have seen in the 
games of leap-frog, fly the garter, etc. He took 
very long flying jumps, and whenever he played the 
game was lined by crowds of school-mates to watch 
him. He injured his spine in a gymnasium in Mel- 
bourne, Australia, in 1871, and was carried to the 
hospital, where he lingered for a fortnight, with oc- 
casional spasmodic convulsions, in one of which he 
died." 

Phinuit also described a lady whom he said had 
died, saying that she had " dark hair, dark eyes, slim 
figure," referred to two rings, and gave her name 
not quite correctly. Dr. Hodgson knew nothing 
of the rings, but the lady died in Australia in 
1879. Among a number of names mentioned that of 



174 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

" Charlie " and " Marie " were given and Dr. Hodg- 
son afterward recalled a friend by this name who had 
died in India in 1885 probably, and a lady by the 
name of " Marie " who had been engaged to this 
friend. Phinuit also said that Dr. Hodgson's 
younger sister was married and had three children and 
that another, a boy, would be born soon. This was 
May 4th, and before the end of the month a boy was 
born to this sister. The number of children mentioned 
was also correct. 

At the second sitting some months later, Phinuit 
mentioned the lady indicated in the first sitting and 
" referred to a black lace collar, with a pin with a 
head, also a ring with a stone," and said she wanted 
the pin and the ring to be given to him. He recalls 
the collar distinctly, and the pin vaguely, but not the 
" ring with a stone." Later in the sitting a reference 
to the beautiful teeth of this lady was made, which 
was false, and the statement that " she wanted me to 
keep the book of poems always with me, the book 
which I had sent her, and had received back. I 
should recollect the writing in front of it, which I 
had written myself." Dr. Hodgson's note states : " I 
had lent ' Q.' The Princess (Tennyson), which had 
been returned. It is the only book in my possession, 
and I think the only book of any kind, which I ever 
lent her. This book is now (1887) with most of my 
other books in England. It was my custom at that 
time to write favorite lines on the fly-leaves of special 
books. I do not recall with certainty what lines, if 
any, I had written in this book." 




DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 175 

The third sitting was practically a failure and 
was an attempt at clairvoyance. At the fourth sitting 
some very interesting matter was obtained. It refers 
especially to three complex sets of facts, with some 
minor incidents of considerable evidential importance. 
The first set refer to the lady called " Q." in his re- 
port. I quote it in full : 

" Information purporting to have been received 
from ' Q.' The chief new matter was : 
" (a) That I had given her a book, * Dr. Phinuit ' 
thinks of poems, and I had written her name 
in it. [Correct.] 

"(b) [Correct. This includes a reference 

to circumstances under which I had a very 
special conversation with ' Q.' I think it im- 
possible that fi Q.' could have spoken of this 
to any other person. It occurred in Aus- 
tralia in 1875.] 
"(c) That she left the body in England, and that 
I was across the country. [This is incor- 
rect. * Q.' died in Australia. I was in Eng- 
land.] 
This was followed by references again to his cousin 
Fred. The chief new matter with reference to him 



was: 



(a) That I was not there when he swung on 
the trapeze and fell and injured his spine, 
finally dying in a convulsion. [At my 
first sitting the accident was not described, 
only the death, at which I was rightly said 
not to have been present. At this sitting 



176 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

the accident was described, at which also 
I was rightly said not to have been pres- 
ent.] 
" (b) That he wanted to remind me of Harris at 
school, who was a very able man, etc. [I 
believe it was also stated that Fred and 
myself talked about Harris, and that Har- 
ris had a high opinion of Fred's ability. 
This was all true; Harris was a school- 
master who taught Fred and myself (Mel- 
bourne, Australia) about 1868 or 1869. 
I saw Harris, I think, a short time after 
my cousin's death (in 1871), and he ex- 
pressed regrets, etc. I do not recall hav- 
ing seen or heard anything of Harris 
since.] 
"(c) That his father was my mother's brother. 

[True.]" 
At the same sitting Phinuit said that Dr. Hodg- 
son had lost his keys near some mountains and that 
they were lying near a walk by some leaves, and that 
" they were on a ring, something different from the 
holder of the keys in her (Mrs. Piper's) hand. What 
held the keys was round." A new set of keys had 
been put into Mrs. Piper's hand. Dr. Hodgson adds 
the note : " I had lost my keys in the Adirondack 
mountains, and hunted vainly for them. They were 
found after my departure from camp on a spot an- 
swering to ' Phinuit's ' description. Before their re- 
covery, however, I had been compelled to obtain dupli- 
cates of most of my keys, and had fastened them on 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 177 

a heart-shaped holder. The old keys were fastened 
on a common key-ring." 

At the fifth sitting further striking coincidences 
occurred. The record was : " Fred says you came 
from Australia. [True.] Lady ' Q.' says so, too; 
says she was there and knew you there, and used to be 
a great friend of your sister. [True.] You heard 
about her death by letter from your sister. [True.] 

" You went into Germany. Fred went with you in 
spirit. You went to Germany after father went into 
spirit. (No.) Got awfully provoked with a lady 
in Germany. You said she was deceitful, called her 
a storyteller. [True. While in Germany, in 1882, 
I charged a lady with falsehood under somewhat pecu- 
liar circumstances. My father died in 1885.] " 

At the fourth sitting Dr. Hodgson had asked Phi- 
nuit to give him a detailed description of " Q.'s " face. 
The description at the fifth sitting was wrong except 
in general characteristics. At the sixth sitting the 
following took place, and is minutely described in the 
report : 

" Phinuit referred to ' Q.,' said she spoke of a Loo 
— something. [Louie was the name of a cousin of 
6 Q.,' very intimate with ' Q.' and myself in child- 
hood.] Said her full name was 6 Q.' A . Is 

that right? (No.) Well, she says 'Q.' A . 

[A is the surname of other cousins of ' Q.,' 

who frequently stayed at her house, and were well 
known to me.] 

" Phinuit then proceeded to give a general descrip- 
tion of ' Q.,' right so far as it went, and described the 



178 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

eyes as ' dark.' She then began to rub the right eye 
on the under side, saying, ' There's a spot here. This 
eye (left) is brown, the other eye has a spot in it of 
a light color, in the iris. This spot is straggly, of a 
bluish cast. It is a birthmark. It looks as if it 
had been thrown on." 

Phinuit was asked to describe its shape. His an- 
swer was : " It is like this, running in towards the 
pupil." He then traced on the little finger nail 
an acute angled triangle with apex upward, and when 
he was asked to draw it a representation of the eyes 
was drawn with the spot in the right relation to the 
pupil and with the right shape, as indicated by Dr. 
Hodgson's statement and reproduction of the spot as 
he remembered it. He says in his note : " 6 Q.' had a 
splash of what I should call grey (rather than blue) 
in the right eye, occupying the position and having 
very nearly the shape assigned by Phinuit. It was 
very peculiar; a little jagged in the edges, and sharp- 
ly and distinctly marked off from the rest of the brown 
iris. I asked Phinuit how he obtained the informa- 
tion about the eyes. He said that 6 Q.' was standing 
close to him and showing him her right eye so that 
he could see it clearly, and saying that that was what 
I wanted. This peculiarity in the eye was what I had 
in my mind when I asked Phinuit for a detailed de- 
scription of ' Q.'s ' face." 

This is an extraordinary set of incidents and cer- 
tainly exclude chance with an emphasis, and they are 
not all the incidents having significance. If we con- 
sider fraud out of the question we have the super- 
normal of some kind incontestably evident, and it will 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 179 

be as little questioned that the facts are relevant to 
the claim of spirit agency. 

An incident narrated by Prof. James is worth men- 
tioning. Mrs. James and his brother went to a sitting 
and were told that " Aunt Kate, referred to also as 
Mrs. Walsh, had died about £ or 2:30 in the morn- 
ing." They stopped at the office of the Society on 
the way home and recorded the fact before any veri- 
fication of it came, though they were expecting her 
death. " On reaching home," says Prof. James, " an 
hour later, I found a telegram as follows : ' Aunt Kate 
passed away a few minutes after midnight — E. R. 
Walsh.' The telegram was sent from New York, 
where the aunt had died. Mrs. James states that 
during the sitting the " control " said when mention- 
ing that Aunt Kate had died, " that I would find a 
6 letter or telegram ' when I got home, saying that she 
had gone." Later, this Kate Walsh purported to 
" control and communicate." 

Another very remarkable set of incidents is the 
following by a gentleman whose name is reserved, but 
who gave the initials " M. N." His wife corrobo- 
rates the incidents as told by him. 

" About the end of March last year (1888) I made 
her (Mrs. Piper) a visit (having been in the habit of 
doing so, since early in February, about once a fort- 
night). She told me that a death of a near relative 
of mine would occur in about six weeks, from which 
I should realise some pecuniary advantages. I natur- 
ally thought of my father, who was advanced in years, 
and whose description Mrs. Piper had given me very 
accurately some week or two previously. She had 



180 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

not spoken of him as my father, but merely as a per- 
son nearly connected with me. I asked her at that 
sitting whether this person was the one who would 
die, but she declined to state anything more clearly to 
me. My wife, to whom I was then engaged, went to 
see Mrs. Piper a few days afterwards, and she told her 
(my wife) that my father would die in a few weeks. 

" About the middle of May my father died very 
suddenly in London from heart failure, when he was 
recovering from a very slight attack of bronchitis, and 
the very day that his doctor had pronounced him out 
of danger. Previous to this Mrs. Piper (as Dr. Phi- 
nuit) had told me that she would endeavor to influence 
my father about certain matters connected with his 
will before he died. Two days after I received the 
cable announcing his death my wife and I went to 
see Mrs. Piper, and she (Phinuit) spoke of his pres- 
ence, and his sudden arrival in the spirit-world, and 
said that he (Dr. Phinuit) had endeavored to persuade 
him in those matters while my father was sick. Dr. 
Phinuit told me the state of the will, and described 
the principal executor, and said that he (the execu- 
tor) would make a certain disposition in my favor, 
subject to the consent of the two other executors, when 
I got to London, England. Three weeks afterwards 
I arrived in London; found the principal executor 
to be the man Dr. Phinuit had described. The will 
went materially as he stated. The disposition was 
made in my favor, and my sister, who was chiefly at 
my father's bedside the last three days of his life, told 
me that he had repeatedly complained of the presence 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 181 

of an old man at the foot of his bed, who annoyed him 
by discussing his private affairs." 

A Mr. and Mrs. T. (full names not given) from 
Detroit, Michigan, and never seen or known by Mrs. 
Piper, report a very interesting sitting with inci- 
dents of the kind that are relevant to spirit agency. 
Mr. J. Rogers Rich also reports similar incidents 
with others of a supernormal type not suggestive of 
spirit identity. There are many other cases of the 
same type in this report which it would take too much 
space to quote. I shall close, however, with one re- 
ported by Dr. Minot J. Savage and his brother, Rev. 
W. H. Savage. I shall greatly abbreviate it. 

Mr. W. H. Savage had a sitting with Mrs. Piper 
and after " several remarkable " incidents she (Phi- 
nuit) said: "Ah! Here is somebody from the out- 
side — he says his name is Robert West. He wants 
to send a message to your brother." Apparently this 
Robert West took control; for there immediately fol- 
lowed : " I wrote an article against his work in The 
Advance. I thought he was wrong, but he was 
right." When asked to describe him he was described 
in language which Mr. W. H. Savage says " was 
photographic in its truth." Phinuit said : " He died 
of hemorrhage of the kidneys." A little more than 
two weeks later Dr. Minot J. Savage, the brother, 
had a sitting, and this Robert West purported to com- 
municate with him. He said that he had been buried 
in Alton, Illinois, and gave the epitaph or text on his 
tombstone, saying that it was " Fervent in spirit, 
serving the Lord." On inquiry of an editor of a 
newspaper in Alton it was found that the Rev. Robert 



182 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

West was buried there and that the text on his tomb- 
stone was exactly as said. Mr. W. H. Savage had 
personally known this Robert West in Jacksonville, 
Illinois, and he had been editor of The Advance in 
Chicago, and had written a severe criticism of Dr. 
Minot J. Savage's doctrines and work, Dr. Savage 
being a Unitarian and Mr. West a Congregationalist. 
Mr. W. H. Savage had not seen the criticism and Dr. 
Minot J. Savage did not know that Mr. West was 
dead. Both Mr. W. H. Savage and Dr. Minot J. 
Savage did not know the cause of Mr. West's death, 
and on inquiry of The Advance his death was ascer- 
tained, and in the Congregational Year Book it is 
stated that he died of Bright's disease on October 25th, 
1886, a little more than two years before the sitting. 
At the same sitting of Dr. Minot J. Savage the death 
of a Rev. C. L. Goodell was correctly announced, but 
was not known by Dr. Savage until verified after- 
wards. 

The apparent character of these facts is evident 
to any one and I need not comment upon them. But 
there are many in the report which do not clearly 
support the suggestions indicated by such as I have 
quoted, and perhaps lead to serious scepticism of the 
spiritistic interpretation of any of them. I shall 
quote the most important cases at sufficient length to 
make them intelligible. I quote Dr. Hodgson's sum- 
mary: 

Dr. Hodgson secured a lock of hair from a lady 
by the name of Mrs. Holmes and took it to Mrs. Piper 
for experiment after the usual manner with mediums. 
The object was to find out what Mrs. Holmes was 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 183 

doing at that time. " According to her annotations, 
the following statements made by Phinuit were ap- 
proximately correct as regards her doings close to and 
during the hour of the experiment, but Phinuit's de- 
scription did not coincide exactly in time with her 
actions, but was given about half an hour after. 
Phinuit stated that she trimmed some flowers and put 
them in a vase; that she sat down at a desk to write, 
and that Charles was on the paper in front of her; 
that she went to the window to speak to a man, that 
she pulled something down at the window and returned 
to the desk ; that she ' pawed over a box of things.' 
Phinuit also stated, incorrectly, that she had a parcel 
like a book in her hand that she had been reading, 
had thrown a wrap over her head, had on a dark 
dress with little light spots in it, was doing some- 
thing to a picture, and, later, was doing something 
with a brush." 

Dr. Hodgson repeated the experiment with Mrs. 
Holmes, after asking her to take note of her doings 
at certain specified hours, and the result was that 
Phinuit was wrong in his account of what she was 
doing at the times specified, but apparently correct 
in many incidents of past experience, some of them 
occurring " as recently as half an hour previously." 
Dr. Hodgson states a similar conclusion in regard to 
" the attempts of Phinuit to describe his doings " on 
a certain occasion when he was far from Boston and 
Miss Edmunds holding the sitting, though " Phinuit 
seems to have given more correct information concern- 
ing his actual doings than can be accounted for by 
mere chance," apparently indicating a " supernormal 



184 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

faculty for getting knowledge beyond that of thought 
transference from the sitter." 

Some other experiments of a similar kind, an article 
or trinket being placed in Mrs. Piper's hand, resulted 
in similar supernormal information, the facts some- 
times not being known, at least in part, by the sitter. 
" The ' piece of embroidery ' tried by Mr. Rich pro- 
duced the name of the sailor who made it. More im- 
portant still, Mr. Rich took a box, of the contents of 
which he knew nothing, and Phinuit described cor- 
rectly the person, X., who gave Mr. Rich the box, the 
person Y., who had provided X. with the article for 
the experiment, and the person Q., who had given the 
article to Y. The article in the box was described 
by Phinuit as a ' charm ' and 6 glittering,' and as hav- 
ing been brought from 6 far off over the sea ' ; it was 
a carved ' but not glittering ' button brought from 
Japan, and 6 latterly worn as a charm with a gold 
attachment.' Miss Edmunds was correctly told that 
her locket brought her grandmother's 6 influence,' and 
that she had had it since she was a little girl," the fact 
being known, of course, to Miss Edmunds. 

" Miss A. took with her to the sitting three articles, 
of the history of which she knew nothing — a locket, 
a ring, and a watch. The locket she obtained the 
evening before through a lady friend whom she met 
by accident in the street. This friend, at Miss A.'s 
request for a ' personal article of an individual un- 
known to her,' called at the office of a gentleman whom 
Miss A. had never seen ( she ' knew only his surname 
in a casual way ') and procured from him the locket. 
It was wrapped in a paper envelope, and Miss A. did 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 185 

not look at it till the sitting was over. Inter alia, the 
owner of the locket was correctly described as being 
physically well, handsome, of light hair and com- 
plexion, as having a big head, and as being immensely 
extravagant, as writing and dictating (letters, etc.) 
a great deal. Phinuit stumbled round and about the 
names Joseph and George in his attempts to get the 
owner's Christian name, mentioning both (and also 
we must add Judson) without affirming either to be the 
name. Joseph George were the owner's first names. 
After the locket was opened, which contained a picture 
of the owner's mother on one side and some hair of his 
father and mother on the other, Phinuit correctly got 
the father's and mother's * influence ' from the hair, 
and apparently connected the name Elizabeth with the 
hair and the picture, Elizabeth being the name of the 
owner's mother. There seemed, indeed, to be some 
confusion between the ' influences ' of the owner and 
those of the mother ; and in connection with the latter, 
apparently, various names were given, of which the 
owner knows nothing. He knows, however, very little 
of the mother's family, and apparently is not inter- 
ested enough to make the inquiries necessary for cor- 
roboration. 

" Miss A. knew, but not intimately, the owner of 
the ring and the watch. Phinuit said that the ring 
brought a had influence — that there was an insane 
lady connected with it who began to lose her mind at 
an early age, and that another person connected with 
it died with cancer. Concerning the watch Phinuit 
said that it came across the water many years ago, 
had been in Italy ; that it had the ' influence ' of a 



186 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

gentleman who had died; that the owner had a sister 
named Annie. The name Elizabeth, Eliza, Lizzie was 
given in connection with the watch. Phinuit said that 
he saw the watch in a box with other trinkets kept in 
cotton. The names John, Joseph, and Jennie, were 
finally given. All these details proved to be cor- 
rect, except the name Jennie, the owner's mother being 
named Jesse (Jessie?). 

" The name of a relative, Henry, was given as 
having been connected with some 6 printing ' estab- 
lishment, and also the name Davis. It was further 
stated that a Henry gave the watch to Elizabeth. I 
presume that these details were incorrect, though the 
report is not quite clear upon this point. The present 
owner was wrongly called a man. 

" The ring and watch, it appears, were kept in the 
same box. John, a ' bad character,' had given the 
ring to the present owner, who suspected him of hav- 
ing stolen it. John's father had repudiated a debt 
to the owner's mother ; he died of cancer in the stom- 
ach. The owner's sister, named Elizabeth, and called 
Eliza and Lizzie, suffered a great fright at the age 
of three years, from being left alone in a burning 
house, and 6 gradually became entirely idiotic' She 
was for many years under the sole charge of the 
owner of the ring, and as the watch amused her, it 
was frequently given to her by the present owner's 
mother, to whom it came at the death of the Uncle 
Joseph. The watch, Geneva make, had been bought 
abroad by Joseph, who lived for some time in Italy. 
Several additional correct statements which were made 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 187 

in connection with the articles, but not mentioned in 
the report, were regarded as too private for publi- 
cation. 

" Miss A.'s own view appears to be a form of that 
suggested by several previous reports, and particu- 
larly in connection with Mrs. Blodgett's experiments, 
that the information given by Phinuit was obtained 
in some way from the objects themselves, to the ex- 
clusion, that is, of individual minds either of the 
living or the dead. Miss A. stated, in reply to my 
inquiry, that Phinuit did not profess to obtain his 
information (concerning the objects) from 'spirits.' 
' He gave no intimation that he was getting his facts 
from any one, ' in ' or ' out of the body ' ; the im- 
pression conveyed was rather that he was ferreting 
about for himself in some obscure way for the in- 
formation asked.' It is probable, however, that if 
Phinuit had been questioned on this point he would 
have claimed that his information was derived from 
the deceased. 

"Thus (March 21st, 1888), Phinuit: 'Who's 
Margaret in your family?' (R. H. ' Can't you tell 
me that ?' ) Phinuit : 6 It's your mother.' Correct. 
(R. H.: 'Who told you that?') Phinuit: 'Your 
father.' 

" Again, I placed in Phinuit's hands a pencil case 
with the initials J. B. upon it, saying that I had 
received it from a friend who wanted to be told who 

gave it to him. The name of John B was given 

correctly, but he has a middle name which was not 
given at all. (That he had a middle name was known 



188 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

to me at the time, though I cannot recall that I had 
ever heard what it was, beyond the initial letter.) 
Then: 

" s George gave it to him. I get the influence of 
Ellinor and Palline, and a young man. No, it wasn't 
George ; cross that out. It was Harry or Henry, and 
Harry's sister's influence was connected with it before 
he gave it to him. That is all I can tell you. (How 

did you get to know this?) J B 's wife in 

spirit told me. She's gone away now.' 

" Pauline is the name of Mr. B.'s eldest daughter, 
and Eleanor is the name of one of her most intimate 
friends. But Miss B. and two other members of Mr. 
B.'s family (not himself) had previously had a sitting 
each with Mrs. Piper, and the names Eleanor and 
Pauline had been given at Miss B.'s sitting, at which 
her mother, deceased, was also referred to. All that 
was correct was in my mind, consciously or subcon- 
sciously, but what I desire specially to emphasise here 
is that while Phinuit's language — about ' getting in- 
fluence,' etc. — did not suggest the * spirit ' hypothe- 
sis, but rather the contrary, he claimed, on being 
questioned, that he received his information from a 
6 spirit.' Further, he has recently expressly dis- 
claimed any power of obtaining information from ob- 
jects themselves independently of specific personali- 
ties." 

I have myself in several instances found that cases, 
superficially, presented no claims to spiritistic origin, 
but when careful inquiries were made, whether about 
the " medium " or directly of the alleged " communi- 
cator " the invariable answer has been some person- 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 189 

ality not living. I cannot say that the cases are 
evidential, but they exhibit the form of the phenom- 
enon with which we often have to deal when it has 
no external claims to a spiritistic source. 

But the most interesting of all the cases in Dr. 
Hodgson's report which I am summarising is probably 
that which I shall call the Hannah Wild incident or 
incidents. I shall abbreviate it for its essential points. 

Miss Hannah Wild and her sister, Mrs. Blodgett, 
had frequently talked over the possibility of spirit re- 
turn, and the former promised to write a letter, whose 
contents she would reveal after death, if any such 
thing as communication from the dead were possible. 
It was sometime, however, before she was persuaded 
to write the letter. " One day, about a week before 
she died, she said: 'Bring me pen and paper. If 
spirit return is true, the world should know. I will 
write the letter.' " She wrote the letter and inclosed 
it in a tin box, and when she handed it to her sister, 
she said : " If I can come back, it will be like ringing 
the City Hall bell." " She spoke about the letter 
often." Miss Hannah Wild died July 28th, 1886. 
Toward the latter part of the same year Mrs. Blodgett 
saw in a paper a notice of the Society for Psychical 
Research in which the name of Prof. James was men- 
tioned, and it led to correspondence and her telling 
him what she had for a test. Prof. James proposed 
trying Mrs. Piper, and the letter was sent to him 
properly sealed. Some articles that had been worn 
by Miss Wild were sent to Prof. James and by him 
to Mr. J. M. Piper, where Mrs. Piper was living at 
the time, and the nature of the test explained without 



190 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

giving any names. The letter remained in the pos- 
session of Prof. James. 

At this first experiment, Mrs. Blodgett not being 
present and her name not being known, " Phinuit ob- 
tained the name of Hannah Wild, and perhaps some 
perception of her connection with the Woman's Jour- 
nal, in which she was interested and to whose pages 
she had contributed, also the name of her sister, Bessie 
(Mrs. Blodgett), to whom she was to give the test, 
and some impression concerning the then recent mar- 
riage of this sister. Beyond these facts practically 
nothing correct was obtained. Mr. Piper had numer- 
ous sittings for the purpose of receiving the details 
of what Phinuit gave as the death-bed letter, and was 
confident that he had been conversing with the spirit 
of Hannah Wild; yet the description of her personal 
appearance was almost entirely wrong. Phinuit's let- 
ter contained no hint of the substance of the real 
letter, which Mrs. Blodgett forwarded to Prof. James 
for comparison with Phinuit's statements, and the 
numerous circumstances referred to in Phinuit's letter 
had scarcely any relation to the life of Hannah Wild. 
They were chiefly a tissue of incorrect statements. 
The result so far suggested that however Phinuit suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the names and other impressions 
which proved to be more or less correct, he at least 
did not get them from the 6 spirit ' of Hannah Wild." 

The next experiment was made with Mrs. Blodgett 
and Dr. Hodgson present, Dr. Hodgson taking notes. 
The sitting had been arranged before and no names 
were mentioned, so that Mrs. Piper apparently had no 
normal knowledge of the relation of the sitter to the 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 191 

letter, whose contents it was desirable to obtain. At 
the first shot came the following : 

" You have a sister here, and did you ever find out 
about that letter? Anna. Hannah. Hannah Wild. 
She calls you Bessie Blodgett. You was in an audi- 
ence and a message was thrown to you. She'll tell 
you all about that. How's the Society — the women 
you know. Moses. He's in the body. I want to tell 
you about that letter." 

The pertinence of some of the incidents here will be 
apparent without comment. The name Moses seems 
not to have been recognisable by Mrs. Blodgett. She 
had been at Lake Pleasant, where a " medium," John 
Slater, had said, pointing to Mrs. Blodgett in a large 
audience : " Lady here who wants to have you know 
she is here. Henry, the lame man, is with her. She 
wants to know about the big silk handkerchief. Says 
she will tell you what is in that paper soon." The 
name Henry was also alluded to at this sitting with 
Mrs. Piper, and Mrs. Blodgett says : " This Henry 
was my mother's only male cousin, and she had lived 
with him all her life until she was married. He was 
lame." 

A little later in this sitting with Mrs. Piper came 
the question, purporting to be from Hannah Wild: 
" Do you remember I told you it would be like ring- 
ing church bells?" With the substitution of " church 
bell " for " City Hall bell," the reader will recall that 
this was the statement made by Hannah Wild, living, 
when she handed the letter in the box to her sister, 
but when asked just after this allusion to tell the 
contents of the letter the reply was irrelevant. Five 



192 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

attempts to obtain the contents of the letter were 
entire failures, though in the process of the experi- 
ments a large number of true incidents were given 
through Mrs. Piper, such as those here indicated. 
But most of them at least were known to Mrs. Blod- 
gett and little was given that she did not know, while 
other living persons knew what was unknown to her. 

The reader will note that at the crucial point where 
the spiritistic hypothesis might most naturally be ex- 
pected to be confirmed was not met, and telepathy 
from living minds might appear to be adequate to 
explain the successes, especially when we observe the 
remarkably interesting fact that the statement made 
when the box containing the letter was given to Mrs. 
Blodgett was substantially reproduced, being known, 
of course, to Mrs. Blodgett, but without any of the 
contents of the letter. If any explanation of this 
failure be possible it is a matter to be taken up later. 
At present I am only concerned with the narration of 
the facts and the recognition of the claims that the 
anti-spiritist may make for his hypothesis of telepa- 
thy. 

There were a number of other experiments with ar- 
ticles, and the summary of the facts would only du- 
plicate such as I have quoted. The reader who is in- 
terested must go to the detailed report for them. 
Some of them are very complicated and suggestive 
and represent clear knowledge of names and incidents 
not known to the sitters. But in his conclusions Dr. 
Hodgson was not prepared to claim that the spiritistic 
hypothesis was proved. His judgment remained in 
suspense. There were difficulties that made it im- 



DR. HODGSON'S FIRST REPORT 193 

perative to preserve an attitude of scientific scepti- 
cism and reserve in regard to a spiritistic view of the 
phenomena. 



CHAPTER VII 

dr. Hodgson's second report 

Dr. Hodgson's first report of which the previous 
chapter gives an account was published in 1892. 
His second report was not published until early in the 
year of 1898. He had been carefully experimenting 
during this long period under a change in the condi- 
tions affecting the real or apparent nature of the 
phenomena. It was about the time of publishing his 
first report that this change was effected. As nar- 
rated in the history of the Piper case (p. 127) a 
friend of Dr. Hodgson's died early in the year 1892, 
who is called in this second report by the pseudonym 
of George Pelham. A few weeks after his death, at 
a sitting held by a personal friend of the deceased, 
George Pelham purported to communicate. This 
friend's name had not been mentioned to Mrs. Piper. 
The man's name, as given in the report was John Hart 
(pseudonym). 

Near the beginning of the sitting a locket was 
placed in Mrs. Piper's hand, Phinuit's hand, if we 
wish to speak of Mrs. Piper's trance personality in 
this way, and in a moment the name George was given 
and the statement made that the locket contained the 
hair of his father and mother. This was true, and 
then a watch was put into the hand and at once 
Phinuit said, " Yes, George Hart." Then followed 
the name " Lai . . . Albert," and the question, 

194 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 195 

" Is that the way you pronounce it ? " Mr. Hart 
states in a note that " the name of his Uncle George 
is in the back of the watch, and when he died, my 
uncle Albert wore it. Lai was a pet name that my 
(John Hart's) father called my Uncle Albert." Mr. 
Hart did not remember that " the name was engraved 
on the inner case of the watch." There was appar- 
ently also an attempt at the name of the Howards 
a little earlier, and a little later came the name Kath- 
erine, and the statement : " Tell her, she'll know. I 
will solve the problems, Katherine." Just before this 
there was also a reference to the name Jim. 

Mr. Hart notes : " This had no special signifi- 
cance for me at the time, though I was aware that 
Katherine, the daughter of Jim Howard, was known 
to George (Pelham), who used to live with the How- 
ards. On the day following the sitting I gave Mr. 
Howard a detailed account of the sitting. The 
words, ' I will solve the problems, Katherine,' im- 
pressed him more than anything else, and at the close 
of my account he related that George, when he had 
last stayed with them, had talked frequently with 
Katherine (a girl of fifteen years of age) upon such 
subjects as Time, Space, God, Eternity, and pointed 
out how unsatisfactory the commonly accepted solu- 
tions were. He added that sometime he would solve 
the problems, and let her know, using almost the 
very words of the communication made at the sitting." 
Dr. Hodgson states : " Mr. Hart added that he was 
entirely unaware of these circumstances. I was my- 
self unaware of them, and was not at that time ac- 
quainted with the Howards, and in fact nearly every 



196 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

statement made at the sitting, during which I was the 
note taker, concerned matters of which I was absolute- 
ly ignorant." 

Reference was made to the name Meredith and that 
George Pelham had lent him a book ; a statement ap- 
proximately true. He also referred to " Uncle Will " 
and said : " I met Uncle William. Ask Mother. 
She'll know." George Pelham, says a note, had no 
Uncle William deceased. He had a deceased Great- 
uncle William, on his mother's side, who was thus 
the uncle of his mother deceased and his stepmother 
living, who are sisters." Some further confused ref- 
erences to a Club were made, having been seen by 
Mr. Hart the last time at the Players Club in New 
York, and then the statement, in connection with an 
unrecognised reference to a handkerchief, " Rogers 
has got a book of mine." Both Mr. Hart and George 
Pelham knew Rogers, according to a note, who at 
that time had a certain manuscript book of George 
Pelham's in his possession. There was a very pretty 
reference to three Alices, which is too complex to un- 
ravel in a summary, and George Pelham's full name 
was written out. 

All this occurred thus at the first sitting, and it 
was some time before another opportunity came for 
George Pelham to " communicate." But when it 
came a Mr. Vance, known to George Pelham in life, 
was the sitter. The " communicator " asked for Mr. 
Vance's son, and on being asked where he knew the 
sitter's son, replied at college. Mr. Vance's son and 
George Pelham were classmates at college. When 
asked where he, the " communicator " had stayed with 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 197 

the Vances, the reply was correct and a descrip- 
tion of the house was given. 

Later George Pelham mentioned a tin box which he 
had had and wrongly said there were some letters in it, 
and asked that his father come to a sitting, saying 
that he saw his mother brush his clothes and put them 
away, and that he saw her take his sleeve buttons 
from a small box and give them to his father, and that 
he sent them to John Hart. The facts were that his 
clothes had been brushed and put away after his 
death, but not by his mother, and the " studs," men- 
tioned at the first sitting of John Hart, were given 
to his friend by the father of George Pelham. 

Dr. Hodgson at a sitting made an " arrangement 
with George Pelham that he should watch his father 
and see him do something that the Howards could not 
know about and tell them at their next sitting. At 
this sitting George Pelham wrote : "I saw father 
and he took my photograph and took it to an artist's 
to have it copied for me." The father recognised the 
truth of the statement, and the mother wrote : " His 
father did, without my knowledge, take a photograph 
of him to a photographer to copy, not enlarge." 

At another sitting the same experiment was tried 
again. George Pelham was asked to go away and 
watch the Howards and report. Before the sitting 
ended George Pelham returned and through Phinuit 
said : " She's writing, and taken some violets and 
put them in a book. And it looks as if she's writing 
that to my mother. Who's Tyson . . . Davis. 
I saw her sitting before a little desk or table. Took 
little book, opened it, wrote letter he thinks to his 



198 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

mother. Saw her take a little bag and put some 
things in it belonging to him, placed the photograph 
beside her on the desk. That's hers. Sent a letter 
to Tyson. She hunted a little while for her picture, 
sketching. He's certain that the letter is to his moth- 
er. She took one of George's books and turned it 
over and said : ' George, are you here ? Do you see 
that? ' These were the very words. Then she 
turned and went up a short flight of stairs. Took 
some things from a drawer, came back, sat down to 
the desk, and then finished the letter." Davis was the 
name of Mrs. Tyson's father. 

Of this set of " communications " Dr. Hodgson 
says : " The statements made as to what Mrs. How- 
ard was doing at the time were not one of them 
correct as regards the particular time, though they 
seemed to indicate a knowledge of Mrs. Howard's 
actions during the previous day and a half, as ap- 
pears from the following statements," made in a let- 
ter to Dr. Hodgson by Mrs. Howard. 

" I did none of those things today but oil of them 
yesterday afternoon and the evening before. 

" Yesterday afternoon I wrote a note to Mrs. Ty- 
son declining an invitation to lunch; this I did at a 
little table. Later I wrote to his mother at a desk, 
and seeing George's violets by me in their envelope, 
gave them to my daughter to put in my drawer, not 
' into a book.' This is the only inaccuracy of detail. 
The day before I also wrote to his mother, putting 
his photograph before me on the table while I was 
writing. Did ' hunt for my picture,' my painting of 
him. What he says about the book is also true, 






DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 199 

though I can't tell at precisely what time I did it as 
I was alone at the time. In all other matters my 
memory is corroborated by my daughter who took 
the note to Mrs. T.'s, and saw me put photo before me 
on the desk. 

" While writing to his mother I did ' go and take 
things from a drawer, came back again, sat down to 
the desk, and then finished the letter.' This was the 
letter finished at the desk, not the one written at a 
table." 

The extraordinarily interesting feature of this ex- 
periment is the disparity in time between the facts 
expected and the facts obtained, the past and not 
the present seeming to have been cognised. The ex- 
periment, however, was tried again at a later sitting. 
Mrs. Pelham was present as the sitter and Dr. Hodg- 
son taking notes. 

At this sitting, " great anxiety was shown by 
George Pelham to make some arrangements for giving 
tests by describing at a later sitting what his father 
and mother were doing at some specified time, and it 
was decided that he should follow them that after- 
noon, during which they should do something special 
having relation to him, which he should recount at 
the next sitting. The day was Saturday, and the next 
sitting was held on the following Monday, Mrs. How- 
ard and myself only being present. At this sitting 
Dr. Hodgson asked what his father did on Saturday 
afternoon, and the reply was : - 

" I saw him take some notepaper and write an 
explanatory letter to Frank about what I said to 
him when I saw him in or on that day. The flowers 



200 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

which I saw mother put before my photo, she and 
father will understand. In connection with this I 
saw them open my book and place therein a picture of 
X. Y." There was then a long communication the 
facts of which Mrs. Howard says are all true. Of 
the incident purporting to represent what the father 
and mother were doing in reference to the son, Dr. 
Hodgson says: 

" It appeared that two of the acts attributed to 
Mr. and Mrs. Pelham had been done as described, nor 
were there any other test incidents, but the third, 
viz., the writing of a certain explanatory letter to 
Frank (brother of George Pelham) had not actually 
been carried out. Mr. Pelham had intended writing 
such a letter on the Saturday afternoon, and had 
consulted his wife about the proposed contents, but 
had not found time to write. This experiment again 
suggests that the supernormal knowledge shown of 
our physical world by the communicators through 
Mrs. Piper is obtained indirectly and telepathically 
through the mind of living persons, rather than by a 
direct visual perception such as we enjoy." 

Many of the facts which are most important evi- 
dence of supernormal knowledge and which strongly 
support the suggestion of spirit agency cannot be 
quoted because it would take too much space to ex- 
plain their setting. It is the same with many facts 
which a critic might wish to use as evidence of some 
other theory. Hence all who wish to be critical must 
go to the original report for data. But I may allude 
to the type of incidents, with an illustration or two, 
which represent important evidence. The reader will 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 201 

recall that in an earlier chapter mention was made of 
the fact that George Pelham not believing in a future 
life had, when living, promised that he would try to 
communicate with Dr. Hodgson if he died first and 
if he survived in a conscious life. In the conversation 
on the subject while living the discussion at one point 
turned upon the philosophy of Plato. At the sittings 
here after his death he alluded to his promise to make 
himself known and at one sitting said : " Plato was 
a philosopher and a good one. You know, Hodgson, 
that was our argument, our discussion." There were 
perhaps hundreds of such little references that sug- 
gested the personality of George Pelham, as he seemed 
to be a clearer communicator than usual, and it would 
take too much time to quote and discuss them in this 
summary. 

A most interesting incident occurred in connection 
with another " communicator." A lady whom Dr. 
Hodgson calls Madame Eliza, a deceased acquaintance 
of Dr. Hodgson, stated through Mrs. Piper that she 
had been present at the deathbed of a certain gentle- 
man as he was dying, had spoken to him, and indicat- 
ed that he had recognised her. She repeated what 
she had said to him from the " other side " as he was 
dying, and it was an unusual form of expression. 
That this had actually occurred at the deathbed of 
the person mentioned was confirmed by two near and 
surviving relatives who were present at the deathbed. 
The gentleman as he was dying had recognised the 
apparition of the deceased person and uttered the 
words as coming from her which were afterwards com- 
municated through Mrs. Piper in the same form. 



202 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

In connection with this same " communicator " the 
incidents may be summarised as follows, in the lan- 
guage of Dr. Hodgson : " She was known to George 
Pelham, and her first appearance was to her sister, 
Madame Frederica, on May 17th, 1892, (about four 
months after the death of George Pelham). She 
(Madame Elisa Mannors) had died the previous sum- 
mer. The cause of her death was designated by Phin- 
uit, who also described correctly, purporting to repeat 
what she was telling him, some incidents which had oc- 
curred at her deathbed. The sitter inquired about a 
watch which had belonged to Madame Elisa, but the 
statements made at this sitting, and to myself at sub- 
sequent sittings, did not lead to its recovery. Some 
Italian was written by request, the lady being as fa- 
miliar with Italian as with English, but only two or 
three common words were decipherable. The first 
names of sitter and communicator were given, and the 
last name was both written and afterward given by 
George Pelham to Phinuit. Some of the writing was 
of a personal character, and some about the watch, and 
George Pelham stated correctly, inter alia, that the 
sitter's mother was present (in * spirit') with the 
communicator, and that he himself did not know her. 
The real names are very uncommon. The Italian for 
6 It is well. Patience,' was whispered at the end of the 
sitting as though by direct control of the voice by 
Madame Elisa." 

It must be remembered that Mrs. Piper does not 
know Italian, and Dr. Hodgson has shown in his 
report why the communication in a language foreign 
to Mrs. Piper is difficult and in some cases impossible. 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 203 

But in connection with this incident it may be well 
to remark some facts accompanying a sitting by a 
Mr. Briggs. The communication purported to come 
from a Honolulu boy named Kalua who had lived with 
Mr. Briggs both in Honolulu and in Boston. " Ka- 
lua tried to write Hawaiian, but the only ' ordinary ' 
words deciphered were ' lei ' (meaning wreaths, which 
he made daily for Mr. Briggs) which was written 
clearly and frequently, and an attempt at ' aloha ' 
— greeting. Phinuit tried to get the answer to the 
question where Kalua's father was, but could only 
succeed in getting 6 Hiram.' But the writing gave 
* Hawaiian Islands.' In reply to the question which 
one, the answer in writing was Kawai, but Phinuit said 
Tawai. The word is spelt Kawai, but is pronounced 
Tawai by the natives of the island itself and in the 
island where Kalua was born. The natives of the 
other island called it Kawai." Mrs. Piper does not 
know the languages of the Sandwich Islands. 

In connection with this, too, may be briefly men- 
tioned the experiment of Prof. Newbold, of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, at a sitting with Mrs. Piper, 
published in a later report than Dr. Hodgson's. 
George Pelham was the " communicator." He had 
known Greek while living, and Mrs. Piper does not. 
Prof. Newbold spelled out to him through Mrs. Pi- 
per's organism a part of the Lord's prayer, and under 
much difficulty it was translated with approximate 
correctness. 

In the sittings of another person are a number of 
interesting complex incidents deserving quotation, as 
throwing light upon the complications of any theory 



204. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

but the most apparent one. The lady is called in the 
report Mrs. M. She had made the appointment for 
her first sitting from a town in Georgia by a letter 
through Dr. Hodgson, so that Mrs. Piper, as in all 
other cases here quoted, did not know the sitter. At 
the first sitting the name Richard was given and the 
statement made that he was a brother of the sitter, and 
when the sitter asked if it was B — , using a pet name 
of the supposed person, there was much excitement 
in Mrs. Piper's hand, and the " communicator " asked 
the question, " Where is James ? " In a moment Mrs. 
Piper's hand began feeling Mrs. M.'s jacket and 
seemed to be trying to reach something inside. Mrs. 
M. gave it, a small locket and chain which she wore 
around her neck under her dress. In some confused 
message of an unevidential sort came the names Tom 
and Pauline. 

Mrs. M. adds in her note explanatory of the perti- 
nence in the names : " Richard is the name of a 
younger brother of mine who died early in 1891, and 
James is the name of my elder brother, and he was 
with me when I was taking care of Richard during 
his last illness. The locket contained some hair and a 
small picture of my husband, who died in 1892. Tom 
is the name of a person who was well known to my 
husband and who, for reasons known only to myself, 
was very much in my thoughts at that time. Pauline 
is the name of my eldest sister." 

At the second sitting which was held the next morn- 
ing, as soon as the trance came on Phinuit remarked : 
" After I went out I found your brother and another 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 205 

gentleman with him. The gentleman is everything to 
you. He will come ... I get the name Brown. 
I get it from your gentleman. Richard says Susy." 
When the writing began the " message " was : " Do 
you know who I am? " Then the names Brown and 
Parker were written, followed by the words : " Oh, 
don't you know me? Don't you know me? I am 
Roland and I love you always." 

Mrs. M. remarks in her note : " In my first sitting 
the name Susy had occurred a number of times, but it 
had no special meaning for me in connection, and I 
was constantly thinking of Ruth, the name of a young 
girl to whom my brother had been engaged to be 
married, but on my way home it flashed over me that 
Susy was the name of a sister two years older than my 
brother Richard. She died before he was born, so 
when Phinuit said ' Richard says Susy ' I asked : s Did 
he mean Susy, when I suggested Ruth to him yester- 
day?' 'Yes, it is Susy. He told you forty times 
the last time, but you wouldn't understand: he said, 
' If that's my sister she must know who Susy is." 
6 She's here with him ; she was his sister, she passed 
out many years ago; it was sad for her mother, the 
most sad of any trouble she ever had. She was very 
bright. She would have been very musical.' " 

Mrs. M. adds the note : " The baby Susy died at 
seven months old, was 6 very bright ' — and my moth- 
er often told me how fond of music she was, and that 
the sound of the piano would quiet her when she was 
in pain. Her death was a great sorrow to my mother. 
The names Brown and Parker were those of the doctor 
and nurse who cared for my husband during his last 



206 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

illness, and Roland was the name by which he, my hus- 
band, was usually called." 

Mrs. M. one day was alone at her husband's grave 
and planted some violets there, and said : " Roland, 
if you can see me I wish you would go and tell Dr. 
Hodgson so." A few days afterward, without any 
one knowing what she had done when alone by the 
grave, the message came apparently from this hus- 
band: " She told me to tell you, sir, that she put 
some flowers on the tomb, and asked me if I saw her 
do it." 

Dr. A. Blair Thaw and Mrs. Thaw had a large 
number of sittings which were exceedingly rich in evi- 
dential matter. I cannot quote them at length as they 
would occupy more space than can be spared. A few 
incidents of a very important character will suffice to 
illustrate their value. "At their first sitting a very in- 
timate friend of theirs, who had been dead about a year 
and a half, and whom they have called Dr. H. in the 
records, gave (through Phinuit) a nickname by which 
he had been called. This name was not known to the 
sitters. On inquiry his widow said it was the name 
used by his mother and sisters, all dead, but not used 
by any one living. At a later sitting a test question 
which was sent for the purpose by the widow of Dr. 
H., and the answer to which was unknown to the sit- 
ters, was correctly answered at the same sitting. 

" At the sitting which Mr. G. Perkins had on 
March 18th, 1892, he presented a chain which he 
knew had been worn by his mother, deceased. Phinuit 
said that both his mother and sister recognized the 
chain, and that both had worn it. This was true, 






DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 207 

although Mr. Perkins did not know that his sister had 
also worn it. She died when he was a small child. 
Again the nurse of Mrs. Thaw's children presented a 
parcel which she supposed contained her mother's 
hair. Phinuit speaking of the sitter's mother said, 
thrusting his finger down the neck of the sitter, 6 Put 
it in there and wear it, just as she told you.' The 
sitter insisted that Phinuit was wrong, but he tore 
open the paper and showed that it contained an Agnus 
Dei, which as a matter of fact the sitter's mother had 
told her to wear." 

The reader may recall that it was a man, here called 
John Hart, who was at the first sitting when George 
Pelham appeared to communicate. Three years later 
he died suddenly in Paris. Dr. Hodgson heard the 
fact the next day from a cablegram to a friend and 
arranged through his assistant for a sitting with Mrs. 
Piper the following day. Soon after the sitting be- 
gan and after some confusion and difficulty the name 
John Hart was given, and in a moment the statement 
came: " I brought Ge (George) here first," evi- 
dently referring to the first communication of George 
Pelham to him three years before. " There were con- 
fused references to the Howards. He referred to two 
other friends in Europe," and expressed the hope that 
they would bring his body to America, saying: 
" They are now talking about it." It was learned 
later that the desirability of so doing was discussed. 

Mrs. Katherine Paine Sutton, who " had many re- 
markable psychical experiences, especially in seeing 
6 figures ' of deceased persons, in 1887 published a 
little book giving an account of these. It was called 



208 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Light on the Hidden Way, with an introduction by 
James Freeman Clarke. At one of her sittings James 
Freeman Clarke purported to send a message to his 
own daughter and at a later sitting he appeared 
to ask if the message was delivered, when Mrs. 
Sutton saw an apparition of him while the mes- 
sage was being written. Mrs. Sutton also saw an 
apparition of her little daughter at a sitting in the 
act of reaching for a spool of tangled red knitting 
silk, while Phinuit was indicating in the " communi- 
cation " that this was what she wanted. Her few sit- 
tings were remarkably rich in evidential matter. 

M. Paul B our get, the French writer, had two good 
sittings, though he apparently refused to give Prof. 
James any account of one of them. A sitting by 
Prof. J. Estlin Carpenter, of Oxford, was very good, 
and one by Prof. Herbert Nichols had a very fine 
test in it. It was the naming of the first word of a 
proverb engraved in a ring which his mother had 
given him years before and which he had lost, though 
he was thinking of the word engraved in her ring 
left him at her death. 

Many more pages of this kind of matter could be 
quoted, but it will hardly be necessary, as it would 
only multiply types of incidents already mentioned to 
a tedious length. But I have been obliged to quote 
largely in order to give the general reader some con- 
ception of the mass of material pointing to the exist- 
ence of something supernormal and which would justi- 
fy the consideration of some theory adequate to the 
scope of the facts themselves, when the discussion 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 209 

of a large theory on the illustration of a few facts 
would not impress the scientific mind as legitimate. 
The facts in Dr. Hodgson's second report are much 
better than in his first, at least in many instances, 
especially in connection with the George Pelham per- 
sonality, as they afford the opportunity to discuss 
certain questions which earlier trances had not an- 
swered completely. I can hardly more than indicate 
some of these points. One of them is the increased 
tendency, especially in the case of George Pelham, to 
recognise living friends and not to recognise those who 
were not personal friends while living, or better to 
recognise that certain persons were not acquaintances. 
It seems that George Pelham never failed to recognise 
his living friends at sittings, and knew well enough 
when sitters were not acquaintances. Then again 
there is the dramatic play of personality in which 
there is the definite appearance of conversation be- 
tween the discarnate spirits themselves, slipping 
through to the sitter as automatisms or unconsciously 
delivered messages that it was intended to send. The 
reader will have to go to the detailed reports for a 
clear conception of this and the extent of its occur- 
rence. He will also have to do the same for an ade- 
quate appreciation of very many incidents which 
would exhaust the patience of all but the critical scien- 
tist to consider here. 

Some of the sitters, like a few in the English series 
of experiments, were either not favorably impressed 
with their results or suspended judgment on the 
ground that their personal sittings were too few to 
justify conclusions. Prof. Pierce had no striking 



210 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

success in his sitting, and discredited the supposition 
that there was anything supernormal in it. Dr. Weir 
Mitchell, writing to Prof. James, after a sitting at 
which the latter took notes, said : 

" If I had never seen you and heard your state- 
ments in regard to Mrs. Piper, my afternoon sitting 
with her would have led me to the conclusion that 
the whole thing was a fraud and a very stupid one. 
Of course I do not think this, because I am bound to 
consider all the statements made, not merely the time 
spent with me. As to this point I want to make my- 
self clear, because I should like on another occasion 
to repeat my sitting." 

Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, of Harvard Univer- 
sity, had two sittings. He could not report anything 
indubitably supernormal. But he said that " there 
was no question as to Mrs. Piper's good faith," while 
he thought her trance condition resembled the dream- 
ing of an ill person. Prof. J. T. Trowbridge, of 
Harvard University, with one sitting to judge from, 
thought that the trance was not simulated, and that 
Mrs. Piper was " in some abnormal condition," but his 
experience was without result in the supernormal of 
any kind. Prof. James Mark Baldwin, of Princeton 
University, with a single sitting, did not feel sure 
that the trance was genuine though he " came fully 
expecting to be convinced on that point." There were 
a few incidents sufficiently striking in his sitting to 
suggest the need of explanation. 

The sittings of some others were practical failures 
in many respects, and led to occasional suspicion of 
the whole thing. But the majority of the sitters 



DR. HODGSON'S SECOND REPORT 211 

had sufficient success to be impressed with the indubi- 
table evidence for something supernormal, and many 
of them felt convinced that they were in reality com- 
municating with their departed friends. It was Dr. 
Hodgson's opinion that this interpretation of the phe- 
nomena was correct, although in adopting it he had to 
surrender the sceptical attitude which his first report 
maintained. For the grounds on which he based this 
change of position the reader will have to read his 
report. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS 

Dr. Hodgson's reports were based upon results ob- 
tained during the Phinuit regime including the work 
of the personality of George Pelham. He quoted 
nothing from his record of the Imperator regime. 
He probably intended to quote this in the second 
part of his report which was promised to follow, but 
which has not yet been published. The effect of his 
report, however, on my mind was such as to make it 
imperative for me to have some personal sittings, in 
order to understand the phenomena much better than 
I did. I had not the slightest doubt about the proof 
for the supernormal, and felt the strength of Dr. 
Hodgson's plea for the spiritistic hypothesis as not 
only actually explaining the facts in a large measure, 
especially the crucially evidential facts, but also as 
being the best hypothesis at the time. But there were 
certain difficulties connected with the mistakes and 
confusions and with the dramatic play of personal- 
ity, as I afterward called it, that made me still sus- 
pend my judgment. But to satisfy myself it was 
necessary to have some sittings, and I so expressed 
myself to Dr. Hodgson in a letter. They were ar- 
ranged for in the following manner, and come under 
the Imperator regime, Phinuit having disappeared 
a year previously. When the Imperator assumed 
complete control of the sittings and arrangements, Dr. 

212 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 213 

Hodgson consulted these trance personalities in all 
arrangements made for sitters. All the results were 
obtained by automatic writing. The use of the voice 
was discontinued, after the departure of Phinuit, ex- 
cept for work of a less scientific kind. Hence my rec- 
ord represents a written account including all that the 
sitters, myself and Dr. Hodgson, said or did on the 
occasion. 



1. Incidents Previously Published 

Dr. Hodgson arranged for my sittings with the 
trance personalities and mentioned no name, saying 
only the " four times friend," and Mrs. Piper not 
knowing, when she recovers normal consciousness, 
what has been said or done during its loss. When I 
went to the sitting, while I was in a closed coach 
some hundred feet from the house I put on a mask 
covering the whole face. When I entered the house 
with Dr. Hodgson he introduced me as " Mr. Smith." 
I bowed in silence, did not shake hands, nor utter a 
word, and during the seventeen sittings published in 
my report Mrs. Piper did not hear my voice in her 
normal state, " except twice when I changed it into 
an unnatural tone to utter a sentence, in one case only 
four words." My object was to conceal my identity, 
because I had been present at a sitting in 1892 for 
fifteen minutes, and met Mrs. Piper after the sitting. 
The present occasion was in 1898, and I had grown 
a full beard in the meantime. 

As soon as Mrs. Piper went into the trance, I took 
my place behind and to the right of her, where I could 



£14 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

see the automatic writing, and never touched her 
even during the seventeen sittings, except a few times 
to place the hand on the writing pad after the pencil 
ran off the edge. Muscle reading was thus shut out, 
and even if Mrs. Piper had been conscious her head 
was so placed on the pillow on the table that she 
could not have seen me had she been normally con- 
scious. Dr. Hodgson read and copied the automatic 
writing and in its place whatever he and I said or 
asked on the occasion, so that the record is a perfect 
account of all that was said or done, in so far as 
it was decipherable. The trance " control " was usu- 
ally Rector, one of the Imperator group of trance 
personalities. But occasionally George Pelham act- 
ed as amanuensis, if I may so call the " control," 
especially at my first sitting, coming in other cases for 
special purposes. 

Under these conditions the first part of my first 
sitting was full of confusion and without incidents 
that were conclusive at the time for anything super- 
normal. Several names and relationships were cor- 
rectly given, and then a whole group of names in con- 
nection with a lady claiming to be my mother were 
given which were wholly false to me and had no 
relation to me. After the publication of my report I 
found that they were all correct and pertinent to an 
acquaintance of mine. But toward the close of the 
sitting the following incidents were written out. The 
name Charles was mentioned and the claim made that 
he was my brother; that he had died of a fever, say- 
ing that " they said it was typhoid " ; that he had 
" had a very bad throat, and it took me over here, be- 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 215 

cause the membrane formed in my throat"; that he 
had seen mother and that she had come after him; 
that he had passed out in the winter and remem- 
bered seeing it snow, and two days later, giving his 
name and relationship, corrected spontaneously the 
allusion to typhoid fever, and asked if " scarlet fever 
was a bad thing to have in the body." 

My brother Charles died at four and a half years 
in 1864 of scarlet fever and measles, so diagnosed, 
with a very putrid sore throat of a diphtheritic char- 
acter. It was in March and a heavy snow fell on the 
day before and on the morning of his death, a fact 
which I remember because I was sent on an errand that 
morning. My mother died five years after my broth- 
er Charles. A little while before this series of inci- 
dents I had asked the " communicator " if he had seen 
my brother George, thinking to trick the medium into 
a false statement. The answer was that he had been 
spoken of before, which was not correct, but near the 
end of the sitting I was asked what I meant by asking 
about George, the " communicator saying that he was 
not there " and that he could not understand why 
I asked him if he was there, and stated that he was 
not coming for a while yet. This brother is still liv- 
ing. The names of Elizabeth and Mary were given, 
the latter apparently said to be an aunt, and in con- 
nection with it the name Allen or Ellen, which was 
possibly an attempt at the name McClellan, which 
was made clear at a later sitting. This aunt Mary 
was the mother of the McClellan, deceased, and pos- 
sibly referred to, and Eliza, not Elizabeth, was the 
name of my aunt by my mother's side and this McClel- 



216 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

lan's aunt by marriage of his stepmother. The name 
" Robertson " had no meaning, but its connection 

with " Ell el " and at a later sitting with the 

name Eliza clearly given where her husband was 
apparently communicating, evidently referring to me 
as " Robert's son," indicates a possible reference to 
the correct name of my father and my relationship 
to him. 

At the second sitting I was at once addressed with 
" James, James, speak to me," and presently the 
" communicator " claimed to be my father, though 
my brother Charles was mentioned again and he re- 
ferred to the previous " communicator " as father. 
At the end of the sitting, as Mrs. Piper was coming 
out of the trance, she gave the surname " Hyslop " 
and said, " Tell him I am his father." My father 
had died a little more than two years previous. Dur- 
ing the sitting the name Eliza was given, that of 
my aunt who had suddenly lost her husband about 
three weeks before in the west, and some incidents 
mentioned in her life with her husband that were 
characteristic, and an allusion, apparently made by 
my father, to a dream of this aunt, saying that she 
had seen him in it. Inquiry proved this to be a fact. 
The uncle was mentioned, but the mistake in the name 
spoiled its evidential force. At the third sitting be- 
gan a series of incidents of considerable value. The 
first allusion to it was in the statement that, " It was 
not an hallucination but a reality, but I felt that it 
would be possible to reach you." A little later in 
the same sitting he said that he had promised to come 



'PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 217 

back if possible and let me know that he was not 
annihilated, adding : " I remember well our talks 
about this life and its conditions, and there was a 
great question of doubt as to the possibility of com- 
munication. That, if I remember rightly, was the 
one question which we talked over." At the next sit- 
ting, recurring to the same subject, he asked me: 
" What do you remember, James, of our talks about 
Swedenborg? Do you remember of our talking one 
evening in the library about his description of the 
Bible?" In a sitting held by Dr. Hodgson in my 
behalf, while I remained in New York, and recurring 
to this subject of our conversation again, he said: 
" Shut out the thought theory and . do not let it 
trouble you," and mentioned Swedenborg again. 

Later still on the same subject he said: " Do you 
remember our conversations on this subject? (Yes, 
I do. Can you tell me when it was?) Yes, do you 
remember of my last visit . . . your last visit 
with me? (Yes, I remember it well.) It was more 
particularly on this occasion than before. (Yes, that 
is right. Do you know what I was doing just before 
I made the visit?) Yes, I believe you had been ex- 
perimenting on the subject, and I remember of your 
telling me something about hypnotism. (Yes, I re- 
member that well.) And what did you tell me about 
some kind of manifestation which you were in doubt 
about? (It was about apparitions near the point of 
death.) [Excitement in hand.] Oh, yes, indeed, I 
recall it very well, and you told me [about] a young 
woman who had had some experiments and dreams." 
The next day recurring to the topic again I was 



218 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

asked if I remembered what he said when I told him 
about dreams. 

The facts were these. About a year before my 
father's death I was lecturing in Indianapolis on this 
subject and surprised my father, and paid him my last 
visit. During the three or four days of that visit we 
had many hours' talk on the phenomena of psychic 
research including thought transference, hallucina- 
tions, apparitions, dreams, hypnotism and an experi- 
ment that I had performed in connection with a coin- 
cidental dream by a lady with whom I had also 
performed some experiments in crystal vision. I ex- 
plained apparitions on that occasion as possibly only 
hallucinations, and was exceedingly sceptical about 
them, though admitting that they might be more. 
This was the only occasion on which we had any ex- 
tended conversations on the subject. I tried to hyp- 
notise my brother at the time, but failed. We talked 
of Swedenborg in our conversations, but I had com- 
pletely forgotten it, and had to ascertain its truth 
from my stepmother, who remembered it well, as she 
had to ask my father who Swedenborg was after I 
left. My father was not a spiritualist, in fact, did 
not know enough to despise it as most people do, and 
I supposed that he knew nothing of Swedenborg. 
I had explained the Piper case as presented in the 
first two reports by thought transference, and hence 
the pertinence of the exhortation to " shut out the 
thought theory." 

His mind recurred to the last scenes of his deathbed 
and mentioned some of them confusedly, and said that 
my voice was the last he heard. I was the last to 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 219 

speak in that final moment. I asked what medicine 
I had gotten him in New York, and with some difficul- 
ty I got the word " Himi." In connection with this 
he also mentioned strychnine. I had gotten Hyomei 
for him, the only medicine I ever bought for him. 
I did not get any strychnine for him. But I ascer- 
tained from other members of the family that he was 
taking strychnine with the Hyomei. He mentioned 
a black skull cap which he finally said had been made 
for him by " Hettie's mother," Hettie being the name 
of my half-sister. This was correct. The names of 
the members of the family were given as they were 
used in life, and many incidents indicated in connec- 
tion with them. Thus my sister Lida was mentioned 
in connection with the organ and the statement made 
that he, my father, wanted her to sing. My father 
had bought an organ and wanted my sister by that 
name to learn to play and sing. 

In the five sittings held by Dr. Hodgson on my be- 
half there were a number of articles mentioned which, 
taken together, have some evidential value, but it was 
mainly in the last of the five that the most striking 
incident occurred. I had asked, through Dr. Hodg- 
son, whether the " communicator " remembered how 
we used to go to church, and the reply was a reference 
to the rough roads and country, naming the state 
of Ohio, in which my home had been. The roads were 
very rough in winter and there was much difficulty in 
getting to church, and when I sent this question to 
Dr. Hodgson by letter I had in mind the very fact of 
this roughness, but the manner of going to church 
was not mentioned. A moment after the " communi- 



220 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

cator " spontaneously stated that he had had a talk 
with the principal of the school about George, my 
brother, and mentioned some anxieties which, he said, 
he, my aunt Nannie, and myself had shared about 
him. The incidents were remarkably correct. An al- 
lusion was made to a hymn, " Nearer, my God, to 
Thee," with his name attached which I thought was 
opposed to the supposition of its coming from my 
father, but inquiry showed that it was a very pertinent 
allusion. The same is true of a reference to a cane, 
though it was associated with so much confusion that 
I could not treat it as evidential, though I am now in- 
clined to give it more weight than I did when I pub- 
lished my report. 

The allusion was to a " stick with the turn in the 
end, on which I carved my initials." I had given him 
a curved handled cane a short time before his death, 
but inquiry showed that he had not carved his initials 
on any cane. But we children had given him a 
straight cane in 1876 with his initials cut in the top 
on a gold plate. The cane was lost soon afterward 
by his brother-in-law, who gave him a substitute for 
it in the form of a stout curved handled hickory stick. 
This he had broken in the course of time and a short 
time before his death I gave him, at the instigation 
of my aunt, a curved handled cane with the represen- 
tation of a " gold bug " on it. This was during the 
gold campaign in 1896, near the end of which he died. 
Seeing that the message about the cane was confused 
I resolved to test the matter indirectly. Hence when 
I had some personal sittings later I took the oppor- 
tunity to ask the " communicator " if he remembered 






PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 221 

shaking a walking stick at Robert McClellan in the 
presidential campaign, and the hand of Mrs. Piper 
showed considerable excitement, and wrote : " Well 
I do. I never was more excited in my life. I think 
I was right too." My cousin Robert McClellan had 
visited him on his deathbed and on asking my father 
how he stood on politics, my father simply reached 
for the " gold bug " cane that I had given him and 
shook it in the air, not being able to speak above a 
whisper owing to laryngeal trouble. This much I 
knew, but I did not know that the occasion was an 
exciting one to him. I learned from the wife of my 
cousin, he having died a year later than my father, 
that my father became so excited on the occasion that 
they left for fear he would have a spasm of the larynx 
and die with it. Immediately after the answer to my 
question I asked who had given him this walking stick 
and Mrs. Piper's hand stopped writing and tapped 
me on the temple for some moments and pointing to 
Dr. Hodgson, who was taking notes, came back and 
wrote : " You did, and I told him about it." I had 
given him the cane mentioned, and the reference to 
the " stick with the turn in the end," had been made 
six months before, though it evidently did not mean 
the one I had given him with the " gold bug " on it. 
I then asked what was on it, and the reply was first 
apparently to the gold-headed cane, then to the hick- 
ory cane which had been broken and mended with a tin 
ring, he said : " I think it had the little ring." This 
was dissented to and at once the lines were drawn 
that fairly represented the " gold bug " on the cane 
that I had given him a short time before his death. 



222 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

The incidents were confused, but apparently indicated 
a reference to all three canes. 

In one question the " communicator," purporting 
to be my father, asked " Where is George? ' and said: 
" I often think of him but I do not worry any more 
about him," and in a moment came, as if struck by a 
sudden recollection, " Do you remember Tom, and 
what has he done with him? I mean the horse." My 
father had worried about this brother, George, in 
connection with business matters, and we had an ex- 
citable horse by the name of Tom that father would 
not sell because of this temperament and hence pen- 
sioned him, so to speak, on the farm, and when the 
horse died my brother George buried him. This last 
fact I did not know. 

At one sitting I asked about Robert Cooper, a liv- 
ing cousin of mine, the object being to test some false 
statements made about another Cooper referred to by 
myself at an earlier experiment. The answer came 
that he intended to mention him, and the demand, 
" Tell me about the mortgage." This cousin at the 
time of my father's death had a heavy mortgage on 
his farm and my father knew nothing about it. But 
my cousin, Robert McClellan, helped Mr. Cooper out 
of his difficulty, and a year later died, and was one 
of the " communicators " at this series of sittings. 

I also asked about a Harper Crawford, who was an 
old neighbor of father's, and the reply was a state- 
ment that he had frequently tried to mention him, 
and the question whether " they were doing any- 
thing about the church." I asked what church 
was referred to, and the reply was that " they have 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 223 

put an organ in it." I asked if he meant a certain 
church, knowing that this Harper Crawford was a 
member of it, and the reply in italics was : " Yes, 
I do." 

I made inquiries in the west and found that an or- 
gan had been put in this church and that Harper 
Crawford, being opposed to instrumental music in 
religious worship, had left the church on account of 
this act. I did not know this latter fact, and do not 
recall any knowledge that the organ had been put in 
the church. 

A most curious and interesting set of incidents oc- 
curred in connection with the name of my step- 
mother, which was Margaret, but always called Mag- 
gie when living. The first time that any reference 
was made to her apparently it was given " Mannie," 
and afterward the name of Nannie came when the 
message was pertinent to my stepmother. I noticed 
that when the reference was to my Aunt Nannie, the 
appendage " aunt " was always there and when the 
fact was relevant to my stepmother the " aunt " was 
omitted. I resolved to have the mistake corrected, if 
the interpretation I had placed upon the case was 
correct. At a later sitting, therefore, I stated what 
error had been committed and asked for the correct 
name. After much confusion and dramatic play 
during a whole sitting George Pelham took " control " 
and the matter was explained to him and he said he 
would get it. Near the close of the sitting he gave 
Margaret as the name. In the meantime an attempt 
by my father to explain his confusion resulted in the 
reference to his mother, whose name was Margaret, 



224 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

and his sister, Nannie, with whose name my stepmoth- 
er's was confused, and to my own mother, whose name 
was incorrectly given as Mary when it was Martha, 
as if trying to indicate what he had called my step- 
mother to distinguish her from the others, having 
called her Maggie, as I have said, in life. 

There was a reference to his taxes, which were un- 
paid at the time of his death, and which I paid after- 
ward, and I said so when the reference was made. 
Immediately my father asked if I remembered help- 
ing him once in the matter of his taxes, and as I did 
not remember it I had to inquire for the possible 
meaning of the allusion, and found that I had prob- 
ably been instrumental in helping him at another time 
to have his taxes paid, as I found that I had a letter 
of father's mentioning the taxes and my brother paid 
them; my recollection that I had written my brother 
about them not being certain. 

There were several " communications " from my 
uncle, who had died a few weeks before my sittings, 
but his name was not given rightly for three years. 
I identified the person meant by the name of his wife, 
which was given several times, and by the relation- 
ships stated of him and others. The " communica- 
tion" was so interesting that I shall quote it. The 
name Lida was mentioned by this uncle, and I asked 
what relation she was to me. The answer came: 
" Annie and she are cousins. Lida, aunt. (Yes, 
which Annie is cousin of her?) There is a sister 
Annie and a cousin Annie and Aunt Lida. She was 
an aunt to James Hyslop, if I remember rightly, and 
there is a sister in the body by that name," and there 






PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 225 

followed by my father, seeing the confusion of my 
uncle, a relative clause, " which is the one I failed 
to mention, and I had to come to straighten out Un- 
cle Clarke's mind, James." 

The statement " Annie and she are cousins " was 
a mistake, though it would have been correct if it 
had been " Nannie and she are cousins." I had a 
sister Annie, deceased, an Aunt Eliza and a sister 
Eliza, always called Lida to distinguish her from this 
Aunt Eliza, and a cousin, Nannie, who was very in- 
timate with this Aunt Eliza, the wife of the Uncle 
" communicating." This sister Lida was the only 
one up to this time that my father had failed to men- 
tion. 

A remarkable set of incidents came with reference 
to another uncle. At one sitting I was asked, in con- 
nection with the statement " there were two James," 
if I remembered an uncle. I asked " which uncle 
James ? " knowing that both uncles in mind had that 
name, and the answer was " James Mc." I recog- 
nised it and a reference to a " Cousin John " was 
made that confused me, as I recalled no cousin John 
at the time, and a reference was made to the " commu- 
nicator's " sister, saying " my sister Ann is here." 
The uncle in mind and indicated by the name " James 
Mc." had a sister Ann, of whose death I did not know. 
But at the sitting a few days later came the follow- 
ing : " I am here once more. I am James McClel- 
lan, if you wish to know, and you are my namesake. 
(Yes, I remember you and that I am your name- 
sake.) Yes, all right. We cannot quarrel about 
that, can we, James; but I despised the name Jim." 



226 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

Then a reference to the names Frank and John was 
made, and I asked who this " Cousin John " was, 
and the reply came : " That was a mistake. He is 
a brother, and he will be here soon." Then followed 
the statement that the " communicator's " father was 
also named John, the name James added to it in the 
confusion, and the further statement " and he had a 
brother David, who had a sunstroke." Then was 
added, " I wanted to speak of Nancy." 

I had an uncle James McClellan, who died in 1876. 
I was his namesake, as well also of my grandfather and 
the author of the Meditations, and I did not know that 
he despised the name of Jim. One of his living daugh- 
ters did not remember that he did, but the other, the 
oldest in the family, remembered it distinctly, and 
told incidents in which my uncle and aunt tried to 
get the neighbors to stop calling him " Jim." I had 
always known him as Uncle Mack, and never knew 
why, supposing that it was to distinguish him from 
another uncle whom we called " Uncle Jim." I my- 
self was called " Jimmie " as a boy, and afterward 
" Jim " in the family until a year after this uncle's 
death, when I left college and my father began call- 
ing me James. I knew this brother, John McClellan, 
as treasurer of the college where I graduated. He 
died about nine months after this sitting. My Uncle 
James McClellan's father was named John, and he 
had a brother-in-law, not a brother, by the name of 
David, who, I learned after some months of inquiry 
and from one of his surviving sons, had had a light 
sunstroke in 1867. The " communicator's " mother's 
name was Nancy. 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 227 

I learned of the death of this brother John two 
months after its occurrence, and without telling Dr. 
Hodgson the fact, asked him at a sitting that he was 
to have a week or so later to ask my father " if any- 
thing had happened recently that he wished to tell 
me," and in a few minutes came the reply that John 
McClellan had come, and he was said to be the 
brother of James McClellan. The fact was correct, 
as the reader will see. 

There was a large number of minor and less com- 
plex incidents which cannot be detailed. But I may 
mention a few of them for their importance. My 
uncle, James McClellan, in his " communications," 
just after giving the name of his father as " John 
James McClellan," it being only John McClellan, 
said : " I want to tell you about his going to the 
war, and about one of his fingers being gone before 
he came here." 

Inquiry showed that John McClellan, the father 
of James McClellan, my uncle, had not been in any 
war and had not lost a finger before he died. But 
I found that a John McClellan, no relative of mine, 
but probably a distant relative of my uncle, from 
another branch of the McClellans, and who lived in 
the same county, was mentioned in the history of that 
county as having been commissioned as an ensign in 
the war of 1812. Earlier in the sittings in connec- 
tion with the name John and associated with name of 
my cousin, Robert McClellan, who was a communi- 
cator, was the name Hathaway and three of the Wil- 
liams family. I had great difficulty in running down 
the incidents. But I found finally that this John 



228 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

McClellan, who had been the ensign in the war of 
1812 had lost a finger there; that he had died some 
years before I was born, and that Hathaway was the 
name of his son-in-law's cousin, and this son-in-law's 
son remembers that the Williamses had been men- 
tioned in connection with John McClellan, who had 
lost the finger. He was known prior to his death 
as " Uncle John McClellan." In the earlier refer- 
ences to the name " John " there was one by my father 
in which he was once called " Uncle John," and then 
a mention of the university where my father had 
sent me and where I had known the John McClellan 
who was my uncle's brother, but who was neither 
mine nor my father's uncle. The old " Uncle John 
McClellan " had lived near my mother's birth place, 
and might have been known to her in her early 
days. 

My mother's name was given as " Mary Ann Hys- 
lop," when it should have been " Martha Ann Hys- 
lop," my cousin Robert McClellan's relationship 
was correctly given, and he gave several correct rela- 
tionships to himself and myself, and the name of his 
wife was given in full, and later the wife's name as- 
sociated with the Christian name of her sister in the 
same sentence. The Christian name of his Aunt 
Ruth was mentioned, though I have no assurance that 
it was she that was meant, and a reference to a book 
of poems which apparently referred to a book each 
chapter of which ended with a poem and that was 
read to him during his last illness by his sister. The 
name of a dog owned by his son when a very small 
child was given and stated to refer to George, which 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 229 

was the name of his oldest son. The dog's name, as 
given, was Peter. 

An incident of my brother's should be mentioned. 
He, Charles, purporting to communicate, and in con- 
nection with the mention of the name John, which in 
connection with Charles' name, had no meaning to me, 
said : " Ask him what happened to the chimney after 
I left. Wasn't it taken down? I heard father talk- 
ing to mother about it some time ago. I mean the 
chimney, James." 

There was an especially tall and ungainly chim- 
ney on our kitchen at the old home in Ohio, and it 
had to be built to prevent the wind from coming over 
the house to drive the smoke into the kitchen. The 
chimney was built in 1861, three years before my 
brother's death. It was blown down by a cyclone in 
1884, twenty years after his death, so that his " hear- 
ing father talking about it " is the most natural ex- 
pression imaginable as the source of his informa- 
tion. The same " communicator " remarked that he 
did not remember Hettie and spoke of her as half- 
sister, after first speaking of her as stepsister and 
then correcting it. He had previously referred to her 
as his " new sister Hettie." She was born ten years 
after his death. 

There are many such interesting incidents, but 
these as published in my report are sufficient to show 
the complexity of the phenomena and their signifi- 
cance for the existence of the supernormal. I must 
take up incidents that have not been published, and 
which, in some respect, are better than any I have 
mentioned. 



230 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

2. Incidents Not Previously Published 

At my first sitting after that of June 8th, 1899, 
and held February 5th, 1900, I alluded to some 
things which had been said in previous sittings and 
which I could not verify. The name Baker had 
wrongly been connected with my aunt in connection 
with an incident which was substantially true on her 
own admission, and I resolved to test my father on 
this occasion by mentioning the name of the young 
man concerned. I did so, and asked my father if he 
remembered Steele Perry, and he recognised the name 
and said the family had moved west, a fact which I 
did not know and had to ascertain from an aunt. It 
occurred probably earlier than 1860. 

I had put a question at an earlier sitting to know 
of what my uncle had died, and did not get any 
correct reply. Here at this sitting there was the 
question asked me by the " communicator " : " What 
was the trouble with the foot, and was it the foot 
or ankle ? " I asked if my uncle's foot was meant, 
and the reply was an assent. The uncle in question 
had died from the effects of an operation made nec- 
essary by being run over at the ankle by a car, and 
this intimation of the " trouble with the foot or an- 
kle " here was associated with my statement to the 
" communicator " that he might take the organ inci- 
dent (p. 222) off his mind. Now this uncle had left 
the same church for the same reason that Harper 
Crawford had left it, namely, because he was opposed 
to instrumental music in religious worship. There 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 231 

was, during these three sittings, a great effort to get 
this uncle's name correctly, but it failed. 

There was apparently an allusion to a picture of 
my brother, Charles, which I have and very clearly a 
mention of the sword which my father had as Quar- 
termaster somewhere about 1845 and which he said 
was kept at a certain place in the house, specifying 
this almost correctly. The sword disappeared be- 
fore I was old enough to remember it. He mentioned 
my stepmother and said she had rheumatism at the 
time, and inquiry showed she was suffering from neu- 
ralgia. I did not know the fact. I also got the full 
name of the man who was called David in connection 
with the sunstroke incident (p. £26). It was David 
Elder. At another time he referred to disturbances 
in my stepmother's home with some specificness and 
inquiry showed that the statements were correct. 
Later again he said my stepmother had had a fall, 
and on inquiry I found this to have been true and did 
not know the fact until thus told of it through Mrs. 
Piper. Again he said she had trouble with her back 
and was quite lame a few days. This turned out to be 
true and unknown to me. An allusion to hearing me 
talk with my brother George about his moving was 
true and known only to me and my brother. 

A most interesting incident occurred at a sitting 
when I was not present. Dr. Hodgson received a 
message purporting to come from my father in which 
he said: "What do they say about Maggie?" and 
Dr. Hodgson replied : "I do not know." My 
father then went on to say : " She has been upsetting 



232 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

things a good deal at home, getting ready, I think, 
for Hettie's return" 

A letter written by my mother on the same date 
of the sitting and in Indiana said that they were busy 
getting ready to leave Portland for the summer, my 
stepmother going to Iowa and my sister Hettie 
to Ohio. It was the intention to return in the fall in 
time for the school which my sister was teaching. 

One of the most important and most interesting set 
of incidents is connected with the " communications " 
of my father and my uncle, his brother-in-law. In 
my published record this uncle never got his name 
through correctly and my father was no more success- 
ful in giving it. My uncle was so confused in his 
"communications " that apparently he gave up fur- 
ther attempts, and as the sequel shows, apparently 
delegated my father to mention an important inci- 
dent for him, which he knew would prove his identity 
to me and his living wife. At my sitting of June 
6th, 1899, (published report) I had asked my father 
to tell me some incidents which had happened before 
I was born and that my two aunts would know. He 
went away to think them over and on his return men- 
tioned several which were all unverifiable, except the 
allusion to Jerry, the orphan boy who had been in 
the family, and in connection with one of the inci- 
dents connected with my Aunt Eliza, said : " I have 
something better. Ask her if she recalls the evening 
when we broke the wheel to our wagon, and who tried 
to cover it up, so it would not leak out, so to speak. 
I remember it as if it happened yesterday" I in- 
quired of this aunt and she emphatically denied that 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 233 

any such incident had ever occurred in her life in con- 
nection with my father or any one else. 

On February 5th, 1900, after a spontaneous ref- 
erence to my Aunt Eliza and some pertinent conver- 
sation about her, my father said again sponta- 
neously : " What I would now ask is that Eliza 

should recall the drive home and let me see a 

moment 1 am sure, but it was one of the shafts, 

but the wagon broke, some part of it, and we tied it 
with a cord, I remember this very well." Inquiry 
showed the incident false in relation to my aunt men- 
tioned in the message. She said that no such inci- 
dent had ever occurred in their lives. 

My uncle did not try to communicate personally 
after this date until June 2nd, 1902. I then asked 
him if he remembered what we did just after father 
passed out, and the reply came : " You are thinking 
of that ride, I guess I do not forget it." But he 
became too confused to continue, and the next day 
when he appeared I put the question about the ride 
just after father passed out. After saying: 
" Your father told you before but had it on his mind 
Eliza," he referred immediately to a ride that we 
had taken to father's grave to see a grave-stone that 
I had ordered placed there. This was correct, but 
was not the incident that I had in mind. From my 
attitude on one of the incidents mentioned in this 
connection he apparently came to the conclusion that 
we were not thinking of the same things, and said: 
" I think we are thinking of different things. 
Let me think. You don't mean the Sunday after- 
noon, do you ? " I replied that I did. Immediately 



234 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

he mentioned that we had a breakdown ; that we broke 
the shaft ; that we mended it with a piece of harness ; 
that the horse was a red one; that we got home late 
in the evening, and that it was a dog that frightened 
the horse. There were a number of slight errors in 
the messages. The thing that frightened the horse 
was a negro boy with a goat and wagon. 

The facts were these: My father died on Satur- 
day at my uncle's home. The next morning, Sun- 
day, a telegram arrived which we had to deliver at 
once and we hastened to deliver it in the country with 
a buggy and horse. On the road side we met a negro 
boy with a goat and wagon which frightened the 
horse and it shied, overturning the buggy, dragging 
it over us and injuring both of us rather badly, broke 
the shaft, which we had to mend with a string or 
piece of the harness, and we arrived home late in the 
evening, having promised each other that we should 
say nothing about it so that it would " not leak out, 
so to speak." But we were so badly hurt that we 
could not conceal it longer than the next morning. 

But the most interesting incident of the whole 
series of " communications " is the spontaneous cor- 
rection of what my father had said, and the supposi- 
tion on his part that I was asking for an incident 
of which I was, in fact, not thinking at all and which 
I would not have recalled but for his reference to it, 
namely, the drive to father's grave-stone. The 
reader will see that my father had confused the inci- 
dent with my aunt Eliza, to whom it was indeed rele- 
vant, but not as an experience of hers with my father. 

But the most important incidents of an evidential 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 235 

character are several connected with Mrs. Piper's 
trances and two other mediums with whom I have ex- 
perimented. This relation of the facts makes it nec- 
essary to mention them in connection with a summary 
of the Piper experiments. They involve obtaining 
the same messages through two other mediums and 
Mrs. Piper. 

At the sitting of February 7th, 1900, after an al- 
lusion by my father to some attempts which I had 
made, not mentioned at any of my sittings, to have 
" communications " through other mediums, and es- 
pecially one that was fraudulent, my father gave me 
a pass sentence in a language which Mrs. Piper does 
not know and by which I was to recognize my father 
in future experiments with other mediums. This 
pass sentence is known only to Dr. Hodgson and my- 
self and would have been unknown to him if he had 
not been the note-taker on the occasion. Early in 
1901 I discovered a lady, the wife of an orthodox 
clergyman, who seemed to have some mediumistic 
power, and I resolved to test the case. I had her 
come to New York for sittings to be held simulta- 
neously with some of Mrs. Piper's, with a view of com- 
municating between New York and Boston, if that 
were possible. They began on March 12th, 1901. 
The attempts to communicate with Boston were fail- 
ures, but on March 15th my father's name was given 
and the first word of his pass sentence was given, 
probably the second word, but certainly not the rest 
of it. His name, of course, was known to the lady, 
but the pass sentence was not. 

Through the husband of this lady I had learned 



236 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of another lady who appeared to have mediumistic 
powers. She was not a professional medium, never 
had been, took no pay for what she did, sat only for 
a few friends occasionally, earned her own living, and 
had no theories of her powers. I wrote to the clergy- 
man to arrange with this lady, whom I shall call Miss 
X., a sitting at which I was to be known under an 
assumed name. He arranged it for May 31st, 1902, 
under the pseudonym of Robert Brown, of Nebraska. 
I have to assume, of course, that she might have seen 
my picture in the papers and could have recognized 
me on my admission to the house. The fact was 
that she did not know me until my name and title 
were given in the automatic writing, and she would 
not have known it then had it not been for the fact 
that she did not go into a trance, but did the auto- 
matic writing in her normally conscious state. I had 
evidence of her irreproachable character before I 
sought the sitting, and from the nature of the results 
I would not have cared what her character was. 
Some of the facts were beyond the possibility of 
fraud, as the reader will see from my remarks on 
them. Their articulation with what occurred thirty- 
six hours later at a sitting with Mrs. Piper will con- 
firm the case's exemption from suspicion. But I am 
less interested in proving this exemption than I am 
the fact that I have been alert to the kind of ob j ection 
which has to be considered in first experiments of this 
kind. The reader will simply have to take for 
granted that I was careful on this point. 

On my introduction under the name of Robert 
Brown we sat down to experiment, I supplying the 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 237 

pad and pencil. Miss X., as said above, did not go 
into a trance. The first words written were: 
" Why, James." Astonished at the promptness with 
which this correct hit at my name occurred, I asked, 
" Who says that? " and received the two Christian 
names and initial of the surname of my wife who had 
died eight months before, the middle Christian name 
being very unusual. This was given with a little diffi- 
culty and confusion, as in the Piper case, and imme- 
diately afterward I was spontaneously greeted with 
the statement : " Well, now, my dear, there is a Rob- 
ert himself, but not your new self, your father." I at 
once asked that his full name be given, and received 
the reply : " I doubt if he can write. The last name 
begins with H., as my and yours do." 

This discovery of my pseudonym and the indica- 
tion of the correct Christian name and initial of the 
surname of my father was certainly interesting, and 
the fact that the lady was not in a trance, as Mrs. 
Piper is, suggests why he did not write in this case. 
Almost immediately after this and apparently with 
the feeling that nothing more evidential was required 
came the statements : 

" I wish to talk. You have the proof now and I 
want to speak of your health. I am somewhat re- 
lieved regarding an anxiety which held me during 
the past four months. You are improved. That 
constant irritation of the throat is becoming less and 
less." 

Nearly a year previous I had broken down with 
nervous prostration and tuberculosis, with stomach 
complications, and during the previous nine months 



238 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

I had recovered from the trouble, with a gain of fifty 
pounds, to the extent that I was pronounced cured. 
But three months, not four, previously I had been 
seized with an irritation in the throat which I feared 
was a threat of laryngeal attack, but by the date of 
this sitting the irritation had disappeared. Only one 
other person in the world, my wife's cousin, who spent 
a month with me in the mountains, had been told of 
the fact at the time, and even this cousin had not 
been told of the improvement three months later, so 
that the fact was known only to myself. The state- 
ments are not evidence of spirit agency, but they are 
evidence, so far as they go, of the supernormal and 
are distinctly against fraud. Then followed this pas- 
sage: 

" Your name is not Robert. It is James. Isn't it 
James H. ? Well, wait a little. We don't want too 
much flutter here. 

" (You know why I want full details.) Ah, but 
you have had these, now let me talk. Don't ask for 
more proof. (I have not had them from you.) I 
doubt if I can give you the one thing you most desire 
this moment. (What do I desire this moment?) 
[I was not conscious of any particular desire at the 
time. I was certainly not thinking of what was re- 
ferred to in the reply.] The sign, well not exactly 
pass word, but the test. If you will keep motionless 
I can be able to give even that." 

[Here Miss X. remarked that she felt as if she 
were going to sleep and that she was afraid she might 
go into some state which she did not like. She went 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 239 

to the window to throw off the tendency, and resumed 
the writing on her return.] 

" Well, we are doing well. Let us go on. I shall 
not be able to give that and much else without the co- 
operation of the messenger. Let us not ask too 
much, James. You have had other cases when you 
least expected it. (Is this father talking?) No, 
Mary." 

Mary was the first Christian name of my wife. 
The denial that my name was " Robert " and the 
affirmation that it was " James H." were correct, as 
the reader will see. My wife knew that I had re- 
ceived detailed evidence at sittings with Mrs. Piper 
before her death. In fact my report was written at 
the time of her death. The reference to the " sign, 
well not exactly pass word, but the test " is surpris- 
ingly accurate. It is not a pass word, but a pass 
sentence, and hence a " sign " or " test." The ap- 
parent tendency of Miss X. here to go into a trance 
in this connection is a most suggestive incident, as 
that is the condition in which I would most naturally 
expect the pass sentence to be given. Still more sug- 
gestive is the reference to the " co-operation of the 
messenger," as the " controls " in the Piper case call 
themselves the " messengers " and claim that they 
have to " co-operate " with communicators in that 
case in order to effect the delivery of messages. Miss 
X. did not know this fact, and, of course, knew noth- 
ing of my expectation of a pass sentence. 

In one message I was referred to as " Prof." and 
in response to the question where we had met, the an- 



240 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

swer was " not where we lived," which was correct, 
though perhaps not significant, and in reply to the 
question where we had lived I got the answer : " The 
river of the beautiful scenery, H. river," and then 
came the last letter of the name, " n " and then " d 
and s," said to be the middle letters. It was apparent 
that the " Hudson River " was meant, and this was 
correct, my wife being very fond of its scenery. 

I asked the " communicator " " What did you like 
most in life ? " and received the reply : " I was fond 
of music for one thing, but you have in mind some 
other recreation or amusement." My wife was very 
fond of music, studied it for five years, and taught it 
in a western college. I was thinking of music when 
I asked the question, but not of what was apparently 
meant in the next statement. My wife was as fond 
of neat housekeeping as she was of music, and I used 
to tease her in life by saying that when she would 
get to heaven her occupation would be to play the 
piano and scrub the floor. 

Apparently prompted by the " subliminal " con- 
sciousness of Miss X., through which I had to get 
the " communications," I asked the " communicator " 
what had been the color of her eyes. With a little 
confusion I got the answer " They were grey on 
blue." This was correct, as my wife had greyish 
blue eyes and I asked what she used to say was the 
color of mine. The reply was " I can't tell. I know 
though," and a correct statement about her hair and 
disposition immediately followed. 

A number of other quite pertinent " communica- 






PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 241 

tions " came, which I shall not mention, but the one 
which was the most important for later incidents was 
this about the color of my wife's eyes. I have placed 
it last for the sake of this emphasis. As I have said 
above, this was on Saturday night, May 31st, and 
I was to have sittings the next Monday and the two 
following days, June 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, with Mrs. 
Piper. I locked up my report of Miss X.'s sitting, 
said nothing about it to any one, and went to Mrs. 
Piper the next Monday without any one knowing 
what I had been doing. 

Near the close of this first sitting and without 
any previous allusion to her presence her name was 
given as " Mamie Hyslop " ; as soon as given I recog- 
nised it, and the following colloquy through Mrs. 
Piper's hand took place : 

"(Have you tried to communicate with me before?) 
Again and again. (Did you get anything through 
to me?) I tried to say I am still with you. (Well, 
when was it that you tried?) Only a day ago. 
(That is right. Do you remember any question that 
I asked you?) Not at the moment, only that you 
asked me to meet you here. (All right.) I heard 
you ask this but not as you speak now. (Do you re- 
member saying anything about your eyes?) Oh, 
Yes. (Well?) I said they were open and I could 

see clearly now. (Well, I meant the color of ) 

Yes, I Do not say anything more. I will re- 
call, I tried to say it Do not say anything 

more. I found the light open. Oh, I hear. I said 
B Grey. (Right. One word more.) Blue 



24*2 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

I started to say blue first, then I happened 



to think that the first word was grey and the second 
blue. You said something about hair." 

I have two other records besides that of Miss X. in 
which there is fair reason to suppose that my wife 
had tried to " communicate." The rest of the story 
is apparent to the reader of the sitting with Miss X., 
as here described, except the statement that I had 
asked her to meet me at the Piper case and that I did 
not " speak " it as I did here. This last is true, 
however, but does not stand in my written record. 
I wrote down only what I had spoken orally. But I 
had over and over again said mentally, or made the 
mental suggestion, " meet me at the Piper case." 
Here the fact is indicated, and the distinction drawn 
between my modes of " communicating " with her in 
the two cases. In the Piper case we always speak 
aloud to the hand. I had spoken aloud in the case 
of the sitting with Miss X. except in this mental sug- 
gestion. All the other statements in the passage 
quoted from the record of Mrs. Piper explain them- 
selves as true, and it was interesting to remark the 
correction of the order in which " grey " and " blue " 
had been given. 

I followed up the " communication " just quoted 
with the same question that I had asked on Saturday 
night previous after receiving the message " grey on 
blue," as follows : ( " What did you use to say about 

the color of my eyes?) your eyes. (Yes.) like 

do you remember the joke about them? (Yes.)" 
What she used to say about the color of my eyes was 
her joke about them, but with this reference to the 



PERSONAL EXPERIMENTS. 243 

matter the sitting came to an end and the " communi- 
cator " could not complete the answer to my question 
until the next day when she returned to it at once 
on Mrs. Piper's going into the trance, and succeeded 
after much difficulty and confusion in getting " green- 
ish grey green." My wife used to say that the color 
of my eyes was " grizzly gray green" resorting to 
this alliteration to indulge teasing. 

My wife mentioned a picture of herself with a wide 
collar and "clasp," a name she had always given 
to a certain type of breastpin, saying that the picture 
was in a little frame ; I found this picture in Philadel- 
phia in a closet drawer, the only one with a 
"clasp" among many taken each year since her 
childhood. The statement that it was in a frame was 
false, as it was in an album. I was asked by her if I 
remembered " Scott," which was the name of a lady 
friend she and I met in Germany and with whom we 
had many walks, but who went to India and we after- 
ward had no communications with her. But one of 
the most interesting incidents was her statement that 
we had paid my father a visit in the west; that we 
had taken a drive in the country on that occasion ; that 
it rained, and that I had pulled my coat collar up 
over my neck, and that I had taken her " to the school 
house." Every incident of this is true. A year after 
our marriage we visited my father in the west and he 
took us out for a drive in the Wabash valley, and a 
thunderstorm came up and as I was in the front of 
the carriage and driving I had to pull up my coat 
collar to save my shirt and collar, which I failed 
to do and was laughed at for it. 



244 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

There were a number of other incidents of equal 
evidential value, but I have given an adequate account 
of the record and shall turn from it to the discussion 
of theories. The less complex incidents, although 
evidential to a high degree, would take more time to 
explain than it is prudent to take here. The sum- 
maries which I have given at such length suffice to 
indicate the problem before the scientific man in pre- 
senting an explanation. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 

I have carefully refrained from the explanation of 
the facts which have been summarised in the previous 
three chapters, as I was not there interested in any- 
thing more than the supernormal character of the 
phenomena, which will be admitted by every intelli- 
gent person who admits that fraud of any and all 
kinds has been excluded from the case. What the 
specific explanation is or may be is now to be the 
subject of consideration. The theories which the psy- 
chologist has to keep in mind when trying to explain 
all such phenomena purporting to be supernormal, 
and some of them claiming a source in the agency of 
discarnate spirits, are chance coincidence, guessing, 
suggestion by experimenters, fraud, telepathy, and 
discarnate spirits. Every intelligent reader of the 
records, of which I have given samples, will perceive 
without my intimation that chance coincidence, guess- 
ing, and suggestion by experimenters will not account 
for such facts, collectively considered, as I have 
quoted. Some occasional incidents in the records can 
probably be so accounted for, and these have not been 
given any important place in the problem or in this 
discussion. But since these assumed explanations can- 
not apply to the whole system of facts we are forced 
to some other theory to account for them, and hence 
we are reduced to the last three hypotheses for our 

245 



246 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

alternatives. The reason that there can be no more 
alternatives is the fact that the current conception 
and use of the term " telepathy " is so comprehensive 
in its scope of supposed action that it can mean any 
supernormal act whatever that is not spirits and not 
ordinary conscious fraud. Otherwise we might say 
that some way of escaping the choice between the 
three theories mentioned might be discovered. But 
the fact that some critics of the spiritistic theory, who 
have given up fraud, assume that " telepathy " is 
convertible with supernormal information represent- 
ing the knowledge of any living person whatever, 
shutting out all evidence of spirits except what living 
persons do not know (!) is indication that we are 
limited to the three alternatives in the explanation of 
the phenomena. These I may state for clearness to be 
(1) Fraud; (2) Telepathy; and (3) Spirits. I ex- 
clude secondary personality from consideration be- 
cause it does not, in any recognized form of it, include 
any supernormal phenomena. 

I shall not underestimate the importance of elimi- 
nating fraud from the consideration of such phenom- 
ena as I am discussing. Indeed, taking the subject 
of psychic research generally and especially medium- 
istic phenomena in general, as they are popularly 
known, I think that the hypothesis of fraud is a 
stronger competitor of spiritism than telepathy. The 
reasons for this judgment will be seen a little later. 
For the present I must only say that I think fraud is 
a much more relevant supposition than telepathy when 
we consider the type of facts purporting to represent 
spirits. Throwing aside " materialisation " and slate 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 247 

writing performances, as wholly worthless in any 
such conditions as they are usually described, and 
taking the detective type of fraud, it always has this 
merit and intelligibility, that it represents a fairly 
clear conception of personal identity. That is, the 
person to whom the facts are relevant is recognisable 
from the nature of those facts, and without regard 
to the process by which they are obtained they sug- 
gest the person concerned. Names, scars on the per- 
son, familiar expressions, and the thousand little in- 
cidents which we should rely upon in normal and 
honest conditions for testing the truthfulness of the 
incidents and their pertinence are what frauds em- 
ploy, and there is usually no mistaking the persons 
to whom they refer, and hence they prove personal 
identity. But it requires much more to prove the 
supernormal acquisition of the information. There is 
nothing in telepathy, so far as we at present know 
it scientifically, to show that its acquisition of knowl- 
edge simulates the personal identity of any one, living 
or dead. But fraud can do this to great perfection, 
and hence fraud is the most natural competitor of 
the spiritistic hypothesis. 

In the phenomena, however, which I have sum- 
marised in this book and in the cases concerned, I do 
not propose to discuss the hypothesis of fraud. I 
consider that it has been excluded from consideration 
as long ago as 1889, and I think that every intelli- 
gent person who examines the facts carefully and in 
their details will not be willing to accept the respon- 
sibility which his theory of fraud will impose upon 
him for its assertion. Enough has been said upon 



248 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

this to make it unnecessary to discuss it here, and 
hence I shall refuse to say anything more about it. I 
therefore limit the consideration of the problem to the 
hypotheses of telepathy and spiritism. 

To state the issue clearly as I understand it, I do 
not yet admit that telepathy applies to the Piper and 
similar cases. Whatever theory is true, I do not yet 
accept the telepathic explanation of the phenomena. 
The objections to telepathy in general are the fol- 
lowing : 

First, telepathy is not yet so assured an explanation 
of any facts in the scientific world as is desirable for 
making it a solvent for such facts as I have quoted 
in previous chapters. The scientific world generally 
has not accepted it with any assurance as yet, and 
even where it is accepted there is no knowledge what- 
ever of its laws and conditions. The scientific man 
will insist that these laws and conditions must be 
definitely ascertained before applying the hypothesis 
upon any large scale. It seems to me that there is 
possibly evidence for sporadic telepathy, and hence 
I am in a position to admit the possibility of objec- 
tions to the spiritistic interpretation of the phenom- 
ena. But the man who does not admit telepathy at 
least has no way of evading the spiritistic hypothesis. 
If he accepts it, he must have some clear idea of its 
laws and conditions before he is even then permitted 
to apply it to phenomena like those of Mrs. Piper. 
He may do it for the sake of suspending his judg- 
ment until he can understand and remove objections 
to alternative hypotheses, but as anything more than 
a politic device for exercising caution it cannot be 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 249 

justified in so wide an application as is generally 
made, until its laws and conditions have been deter- 
mined, and there is not even an approximation to this 
at present. 

But suppose that telepathy has been proved to be 
a fact, it must be remembered that the conditions 
under which it has any claim at all to scientific rec- 
ognition represent the agent as thinking of the fact 
transmitted at the time that the percipient obtains it. 
That is, telepathy as a necessary supposition, if neces- 
sary at all, is limited to the present active mental 
states of the communicator. To put it plainly, telep- 
athy, so far as it is scientifically supported, represents 
what the person communicating is thinking about at 
the time that the thought is received by another, and 
any other form of telepathy has not yet received suf- 
ficient scientific credentials to be assured of its ex- 
tension beyond what I have said. It may be capable 
of doing all that is claimed for it, but this claim has 
not yet been adequately proved. There are facts that 
suggest this larger telepathy, but the scientific man 
will be as cautious in accepting this extension of it 
as he is in accepting it in any form. Until he obtains 
evidence of its extension beyond the present active 
mental states of the agent or communicator, he will 
not readily admit its application to such phenomena 
as a whole, as I have mentioned in previous chapters. 

Another limitation of it is important. It has been 
referred to before. I mean its meaning as a con- 
ception. This is that the term means, in the light 
of the experiments that are supposed to justify it at 
least as a working hypothesis, nothing more than the 



250 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

existence of some cause for coincidences in the 
thoughts of two persons that cannot be due to chance. 
It is not an explanation of anything. It is not a 
name for a cause of the coincidence, but a name for 
a nexus that demands a cause. We often speak and 
think of it as meaning or implying a direct trans- 
mission of thought from one living person to another 
in some supernormal manner, and we are led to this 
conception of it by the perpetual assumption that it 
excludes a spiritistic influence. But the fact is that 
we know nothing whatever about the process of super- 
normal communication from mind to mind. It may be 
a direct transmission of thought by some process not 
yet known and not involving the intermediation of 
spirits. It may be by some process of vibration set 
up in the ether between mind and mind, that is living 
minds. It may be by spiritistic mediation in which 
a spirit gets the thought in some unknown way from 
one living person and carries it to another. It may 
be by ethereal vibrations set a-going by a thinker and 
perceived and interpreted by a spirit and then com- 
municated by a similar process through the ether to 
another living mind. I do not know which of these 
it may be, or whether it is any other. I know of no 
reasons to justify the supposition that our thoughts 
affect the ether in any way, or produce vibrations 
anywhere in the material universe. But all these may 
be possible, so far as I know. But there are none 
of them sufficiently known to assure ourselves that 
telepathy excludes the operation of spirits in all cases. 
If we assume that it is some direct process between 
living minds without the intermediation of outside 






THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 251 

agencies it of course limits the nature of the evidence 
that may be accepted as proof of spiritistic influence, 
but it does not exclude the possibility of that agency. 
And if telepathy be limited, as the scientific evidence 
at its best does limit it, to the present active states of 
the agent's mind living, we still have no adequate 
reasons for supposing that it can explain facts not so 
thought of at the time. If we knew the process 
involved, we might employ the hypothesis more con- 
fidently to qualify or deny spiritistic reality. But 
not knowing this process we can only maintain our 
suspense of judgment, not disqualify the spiritistic 
theory when we are dealing with personal identity and 
the memories of sitters at such experiments as have 
been quoted. 

But a still more important limitation of the telep- 
athic hypothesis is to be found in its entire consistency 
with that of spirits. No matter what the process 
involved in the transmission of thought from one liv- 
ing mind to another, the fact does not exclude the 
possibility that telepathy may be the very process by 
which the discarnate, if it exists, communicates with 
the living. If thought produces vibration in the 
ether or other media between mind and mind, whether 
living or deceased, it will only be a question of the 
kind of facts supernormally obtained to settle wheth- 
er the telepathy is between living minds only or be- 
tween the living and the dead. But suppose that 
we do not know whether there is any undulatory ac- 
tion in media involved in the process, or that we know 
that no such process exists, still the fact that telepa- 
thy, when accepted as a fact, means that mind can 



252 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

communicate to other minds in supernormal ways, it is 
again only a question of the kind of evidence to 
determine whether a discarnate consciousness may 
not also, if it exists, communicate by this telepa- 
thy to living minds, and prove its identity. If a 
living mind can transfer its thoughts to another 
living mind without the use of physical means or 
of sensory impressions a discarnate mind might do 
the same, and it is only a question of the evidence and 
the kind of facts obtained to decide whether this 
source is not the real one. Thus it appears that 
telepathy, so far from being an objection to the spirit- 
istic hypothesis, might represent the means by which 
spirit communication should be effected. Of course 
the existence of telepathy as a mode of communica- 
tion between living minds would increase the need of 
caution in accepting the real or alleged fact of dis- 
carnate spirits as communicating with the living, sup- 
posing them to exist, and so would serve as an evi- 
dential difficulty in the credibility of the existence of 
spirits, and would thus make it harder to prove the 
existence of the discarnate, but it would not imply 
either the impossibility or incredibility of such com- 
munication. On the contrary, it would rather 
strengthen the possibility of it. It might be the very 
means of proving the condition of securing the evi- 
dence. I do not say that it is such a condition, as we 
know too little about it to justify any assurance on 
that point. But if supersensible communications can 
take place between the living, the fact shows that the 
acquisition of knowledge is not always an ordinary 
physical affair, and it would be only a question of 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 253 

evidence to determine whether the supersensible phe- 
nomena were from supersensible beings that once ex- 
isted in bodily form. If the evidence is of that kind 
which unmistakably points to the person represented, 
and if telepathy does not in any of its ordinary mani- 
festations show that it represents the personal identity 
of living persons, we cannot well escape belief in 
spirits, unless we suppose that subconscious actions are 
rather fiendish in their simulation of spirits after 
acquiring the information that so evidently points to 
the persons represented. The psychological compli- 
cations involved in a telepathic hypothesis that com- 
pletely simulates spirits must make any man pause 
when trying to estimate the nature of unconscious 
mental action. It would have to be regarded as su- 
premely devilish in its character, as we shall see a little 
later when the range of such telepathy is examined. 

It will be important to see just what we have to 
conceive in the kind of telepathy that it is necessary 
to assume when we are discrediting the explanation 
by spirits of such phenomena as I have summarised. 
Telepathy as we know it, if we know it scientifically 
at all, is generally and perhaps always limited, in its 
access to other men's minds, to the present mental 
states. This is all that we have even ostensibly as- 
sured evidence for. But such telepathy does not even 
approximate an explanation of the Piper and similar 
cases. Prof. Stout, of St. Andrew's University, Scot- 
land, speaking of Mr. F. W. H. Myers' work on 
Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, 
says : " I agree with Mr. Myers that there is no suffi- 
cient reason for being peculiarly sceptical concerning 



254 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

communications from departed spirits. I also agree 
with him that the alleged cases of such communication 
cannot be with any approach to a probability ex- 
plained away as mere instances of telepathy." There 
is no sort of coincidental relation in most of the inci- 
dents between what the sitter is consciously thinking 
of in the Piper and similar cases, and what is said or 
written by the medium. The most of the incidents 
told are not in the sitter's conscious thought and many 
have never been there at all, and I have purposely 
narrated a number of incidents that prove this. 
Hence telepathy as represented by such phenomena as 
are supposed to prove it is not at all adequate to 
explain such incidents as are not in the conscious men- 
tal action of the sitter. The conception of telepathy 
will have to be made to include the capacity of the 
medium to acquire facts from the memory of 
the sitter, or what some call the subliminal con- 
dition of the mind. Some would say the " sub- 
jective mind," but this is a misnomer, as it im- 
plies things not implied by the terms memory and 
subliminal. But no explanation of the Piper and 
similar cases is possible which does not at least suppose 
the acquisition of knowledge from the memory of 
sitters, if the spiritistic theory is to be rejected. Per- 
haps the majority of the facts represent incidents 
known to the sitter at some time, but not in his con- 
scious state at the time of the sitting. But there is 
as yet no adequate scientific evidence of any such 
telepathy. It is true that, in the Piper case, and 
perhaps others, there are incidents that suggest such 
a possibility, but they are far from proving it. They 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 255 

are such incidents as occurred at Dr. Hodgson's sit- 
tings in which the memories instead of the present 
mental states of the Howards were obtained (p. 197), 
and the same with Mrs. Holmes (p. 182). They are 
types of occasional phenomena. But it should be re- 
membered that in the former case George Pelham had 
already done much to prove his personal identity 
before he attempted to ascertain the thoughts and 
actions of persons living, so that this supposed ex- 
tension of telepathy involves a relation to a possible 
spirit agency as its means. The only thing that 
suggests an explanation other than spirits is the fact 
that the incidents are not relevant to the personal 
identity of deceased persons, while they might be 
relevant to the proof of their powers if their existence 
is once proved or assumed. But no telepathy that 
does not go as far as the acquisition of knowledge from 
the memories of sitters will explain the phenomena, 
and there is no such scientific evidence for this kind 
of telepathy as there is for the transmission of present 
mental states. 

But let us grant that telepathy can reach the mem- 
ories of sitters, that it can have access to the sub- 
liminal states of the mind as well as the present 
active states of consciousness of sitters. Yet even 
this telepathy will not approximate an explanation of 
the phenomena. No telepathy which does not extend 
in some way to all living minds and memories can 
even approach an explanation of such cases. So far 
as I know such a telepathy may be possible, but there 
is no adequate scientific evidence for it. I do not 
know even one iota of evidence for it that can be 



256 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

scientifically accepted. Moreover it represents a 
process far more incredible than spirits, and no intel- 
ligent man will resort to the belief of it in any haste. 
Only a superstitious prejudice against the possibility 
of spirits will induce a man to betray such credulity 
as the acceptance of such a universal telepathy. A 
man that can believe it in the present state of human 
knowledge can believe anything, and ought to be 
tolerant of those who have a lurking suspicion that 
there might be such a thing as a discarnate spirit. I 
do not yet believe there is any such telepathy, and I 
am certain that there is no adequate scientific evidence 
for it. But I shall treat any evidence for it respect- 
fully, and when it is proved I will frankly admit 
the difficulties which it would propose for a spiritistic 
theory. I shall exact, however, of its claimants as 
much specific evidence as now exists for the possibility 
of discarnate spirits. 

I have seen the hypothesis proposed that Mrs. 
Piper's subliminal condition is the recipient of all the 
mental states of living people and their memories, 
these being acquired by telepathy going on all the 
time, but not revealed in her normal life, and that she 
has only to go into a trance that her subliminal action 
may select the proper facts and palm them off for 
communication with spirits. This hypothesis is at 
least as large as the spiritistic, and it is so wholly 
lacking in evidence and conceivability that I shall not 
treat it seriously in the light of the mistakes occurring 
in mediumistic phenomena until it presents some cre- 
dentials that will save it from ridicule. I shall not 
make any assertions about impossibilities, but I may 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 257 

preserve my sanity if I am not more credulous in re- 
gard to this than I might be about discarnate spirits, 
who would be as respectable realities as this kind of 
telepathy and fiendish representation. 

I come now to more specific objections to the telep- 
athic hypothesis as an explanation of the phenomena 
under discussion. The general difficulties of it show 
that it has at least to be as large as the spiritistic, or 
even larger, in order to be a competitor, and also in 
every form as incapable of denying the applicability 
of spirits to the phenomena as equally relevant to 
the facts, if they are not proved by them. But there 
are certain specific objections drawn from the records 
of such phenomena that are very important to keep in 
mind. 

The first of these is the selectiveness of the process 
involved in the phenomena presented. If telepathy 
between the living is the explanation of them it has 
to possess the same selectiveness, and in fact a far 
larger selectiveness in securing the facts than any 
selectiveness supposed of discarnate spirits. What is 
noticeable in the facts presented is their definite relev- 
ancy to the proof of the personal identity of the de- 
ceased. Whether the deceased continue to exist or 
not, there can be no doubt as to who is meant by the 
facts, and if telepathy acquires them it certainly has 
an amazing power to select the right ones from the 
memories of sitters and other living persons at a 
distance. Experimental and spontaneous telepathy 
show no trace of any such power. Their sole analogy 
is in the phenomena of mechanics, which represents an 



258 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

action as producing its immediate effect in definite 
coincidence or sequence. Mechanical agents do not 
select facts with reference to chooseable or resectable 
ends. They act with reference to prearranged condi- 
tions. Wireless telegraphy does not represent the 
coherer as selecting messages from the multitude of 
vibrations about it, but as attuned to a specific type of 
them at any point of space in which it may be placed. 
The messages sent out from the originating station 
ramify through all space and wherever the coherer 
is placed it gets them when it is properly adjusted to 
that form of vibration, and does not select from the 
multitude. It is not a self-adjusting instrument, but 
a passive instrument subj ect to great limitations. 

But a still more important limitation to the anal- 
ogy exists. The coherer does not respond to messages 
sent out last week, the last year, or the last half cen- 
tury. It is sensitive only to messages that are prac- 
tically simultaneous with its own recipiency, allowing 
only for the velocity of the transmission. Nor will 
the analogy of light from distant stars be reasonably 
accessible here to illustrate the assumed selectiveness 
of telepathy, as the reader may determine for himself 
by a careful study of the facts as a whole. Hence 
in two respects the analogy of wireless telegraphy 
wholly fails to make the phenomena intelligible by 
telepathy. They are first the elasticity of attunement 
assumed in mediumistic phenomena and the absence of 
selectiveness in wireless telegraphy. The only point 
in which the two processes resemble each other is in the 
absence of ordinary physical media for their trans- 
mission. 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 259 

The incidents quoted in the reports show, super- 
ficially at least, just that selectiveness which we should 
expect of memory and association trying to prove 
personal identity, even though they are forced to act 
in an abnormal mental condition on the part of both 
the medium and the discarnate communicator. The 
phenomena look like mental phenomena and represent 
them in a selective form quite at variance with any- 
thing that we know in telepathy as proved or sup- 
posed. 

A second objection to telepathy in the case is the 
inconsistency between the mistakes and errors of fact 
in the " communications " and the enormous powers 
which have to be attributed to it in order to explain 
the correct facts. Any process which is supposed to 
have ready access to all living memories and distin- 
guishes with apparent infallibility between the rele- 
vant and the irrelevant facts for illustrating the per- 
sonal identity of the dead ; any process which ignores 
the personalities of the living and confines its acquisi- 
tions to the facts which represent only the personali- 
ties of the dead, is a process which is not lightly to be 
treated as telepathy, and it ought not naturally to be 
supposed guilty of the absurd mistakes and confusions 
which the record shows. Apparently omniscient dis- 
crimination between the facts pertinent to living per- 
sonalities and those pertinent to deceased personali- 
ties, with evidence of the most amazing limitations and 
ignorance within the territory of facts pertaining to 
the dead and circumscribed for selection from them, 
is not easily explicable by telepathy. The assump- 
tion simultaneously of limited and unlimited powers 



260 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

is not to be made hastily. We would expect such 
limitations of discarnate spirits, but hardly of a telep- 
athy which is apparently omniscient and unlimited in 
its powers. 

A third objection to the telepathic explanation is 
its limitation to trivial matters. This is usually the 
great objection to the spiritistic theory, and I shall 
not defend its consistency with that hypothesis. But 
I must insist that the triviality of the facts is abso- 
lutely incompatible with the assumption of the enor- 
mous powers of access to living memories which the 
advocate of telepathy makes and must make. If the 
medium can reach out into the whole world of living 
consciousness and memory and select from this infinite 
mass of experiences just the right ones to represent 
the personality of the deceased it ought to get with 
ease all the important and elevated features of those 
personalities, and not limit its access to the trivial. 
Personal characteristics ought to be produced in their 
perfection, and the moral, religious, or irreligious, 
political, literary, philosophical characteristics of any 
one ought to be producible at will, instead of this dis- 
torted and confused mass of trivial incidents which we 
find. The objection from triviality may be fatal to 
spiritistic theories, if you like, but it is far more fatal 
to the telepathic hypothesis, because it has to be 
assumed to be so large to explain the facts we get 
and to discriminate between the relevant and the irrel- 
evant, that there is no excuse of a rational sort for its 
limitations to trivial matters, while we might well 
imagine the discarnate as so limited when we have to 
start with their finitude at the outset and especially if 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 261 

they have to communicate under all sorts of difficul- 
ties, mental and cosmic. But this enlarged universal 
telepathy has no excuse for its limitation to trivial 
matters, when it can discriminate so infallibly appar- 
ently between the facts pertaining to living person- 
alities and facts pertaining to deceased personalities. 
A fourth objection to the telepathic theory is the 
change of " communicators." Readers of the record 
will find that the " communicators " do not appear 
always to remain long, but give place to other " com- 
municators " who are better able to endure the condi- 
tions affecting clear " communications." The record 
often shows that a " communicator " can apparently 
remain to send messages only for a short time, and 
his or her place will be taken by another. The conse- 
quence is that the telepathic hypothesis has to appear 
to be able to represent itself as implying the capacity 
of telepathy to obtain information from the sitter or 
other parties at a distance all the time, but cannot 
obtain such information about the same person all the 
time. It must thus simulate difficulties of " communi- 
cation " as would be most natural for spirits when in 
fact there are none for telepathy ! We might natu- 
rally suppose that spirits would encounter difficulty 
and feel it necessary to interrupt " communications " 
to enable them to recover power to meet the extraor- 
dinary emergency ; but if telepathy encountered diffi- 
culties it would be interrupted in its process of acquir- 
ing the facts, and the change of " communicators " 
does not always show such a characteristic, and may 
even on the contrary involve an improvement in its 
access to information. 



262 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

A fifth objection is the differences in the personal 
equation of the " communicators." Some " communi- 
cators " are " clear " and others are not so. That is 
some " communicators " seem able to send good mes- 
sages and others can either not send evidential inci- 
dents at all, or send them in a very confused form. 
This simulation of what we should most naturally 
expect of spirits ought not to characterise telepathy. 
There is apparently nothing in the memory of the 
sitters or other living persons to make the incidents 
remembered of one person easily accessible and those 
of another impossible. Thus, for instance, in my 
record I received practically nothing about my mother 
except her name, and even that was given by another 
than herself ! My uncle, James McClellan, was a 
very clear " communicator " in most incidents, and his 
son was almost a failure, though I remembered far 
more about the son than I did about his father. An- 
other uncle was very confused for two years but 
much clearer after that, while my father became more 
confused with time. Now, I see no reason for con- 
sidering that time should affect the " communica- 
tions " of telepathy in reference to one person more 
than another. The differences in the phenomena cor- 
respond to what we should expect in the personal 
equation of real " communicators," and not to any- 
thing in the minds of living persons and the assumed 
process of telepathy acquiring its information. 

A sixth objection is the fact that the one cue to the 
assumed access of telepathy to information is appar- 
ently the association in the living person's memory 
of a given name with the incidents related to his per- 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 263 

sonality, while the " communications " often represent 
the intermediation of one " spirit " to send messages 
proving the identity of another, a process most natural 
on the spiritistic hypothesis and without excuse on the 
telepathic, except it is conceived as equal in all cases 
to the simulation of what we should expect on the 
opposing theory. Thus my brother Charles men- 
tioned incidents which he did not know in life, and so 
not associated in my memory with him, and some of 
them occurring after his death, but quite adapted to 
prove the identity of others. My father confused 
a most important incident of my uncle's experience 
with me, just after his — my father's — death, with 
his sister, the uncle's wife, and had to be spontaneously 
corrected afterward and the incident told correctly by 
my uncle. My wife acted as intermediary for my 
father in some instances. All this conflicts with the 
only possible cue that telepathy might be expected to 
use for the discrimination of personalities in the ac- 
quisition and reference of its information. 

The seventh objection is the dramatic play of per- 
sonality in the " communications." This takes the 
form of alleged conversation and intercourse on " the 
other side " between discarnate spirits, which would be 
quite natural on the spiritistic hypothesis, but un- 
natural and unnecessary in telepathy, unless we as- 
sume again that it does only what we would expect 
spirits to do, and nothing else. Thus the " control " 
says something to the " communicator " and his an- 
swer is made to the " control," the conversation slip- 
ping through as an automatism or unintended mes- 
sage. There is no reason for this on the telepathic 



264 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

hypothesis as we know it. This feature of the process 
can be appreciated only by a study of the detailed 
record, and has not been illustrated in the summary 
of the facts to give the reader any conception either 
of its nature or amount in the " communications." 
But it is a very frequent phenomenon in the record 
and represents what we should expect to be an accom- 
paniment of spiritistic agency and influence, but not 
of telepathy as known. 

The eighth objection is the fact that telepathy is 
only a part of the process necessary to explain the 
records. Telepathy does not explain dramatic play 
of personality, the mistakes and confusions, or the 
vast mass of unevidential matter involved in the rec- 
ords. Secondary personality of a most remarkable 
character has to be added to the process to give it 
even the appearance of rationality, while the spiritistic 
Ivypothesis, with such adjunctive suppositions as ab- 
normal psychology supplies us, gives unity and ration- 
ality to the whole result. 

The ninth obj ection is the fact that persons who did 
not know Dr. Hodgson when they were living often 
indicate that fact when he is present at the sittings in 
spite of the fact that Dr. Hodgson has been known 
for years by the normal Mrs. Piper and presumably 
known by her at least telepathically in the trance con- 
dition. For persons having known him in their lives 
recognise him after their death. This peculiarity of 
the case is not natural to telepathy, unless we as- 
sume, as is done without evidence, that there is no 
resource in the simulation of the spiritistic which it is 
not capable of using. 



THE TELEPATHIC HYPOTHESIS 265 

The tenth objection is the difference between Rec- 
tor's and George Pelham's ability to get proper 
names, or certain difficult and unfamiliar messages, 
while they are otherwise about equal in their abilities. 
There is no reason of an ordinary kind that can be 
adduced for their equality in all but proper names and 
the like. George Pelham is better than Rector in 
this respect, though the telepathic hypothesis has to 
assume them, merely secondary personalities of Mrs. 
Piper. We can conceive them different in their gen- 
eral ability or wholly different throughout, but it is 
not natural to expect them on any telepathic theory 
to differ in one type of incident alone. 

Whatever the explanation of the phenomena I can- 
not see that, in our present state of knowledge, telep- 
athy can escape the fatality of these objections. One 
difficulty might be overcome, but there is an accumu- 
lation of them, and applicable to every form in which 
telepathy can be conceived, whether concerned with the 
active consciousness or the memory of the sitter, or 
with the consciousness and memory of distant living 
persons. If telepathy were anything about which we 
knew the laws and conditions, we might discover its 
real capacities and limitations. But in any knowl- 
edge of the facts proving it, as a theory opposed 
to the hypothesis of spirits in such facts as are here 
on record, we should not expect such a complex sim- 
ulation of spirits as has to be supposed in order to 
supplant their agency. In its powers and limitations, 
one of them extending to infinity and the other in- 
dicating amazing finitude, it has to be conceived 
as far larger on the one hand than the spiritistic 



266 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

and taxing our credulity to a much greater extent, 
and on the other as absurdly more limited than 
we should either suppose it to be from its otherwise 
attested capacity or expect spirits to be. It may be 
the true theory. I cannot be dogmatic about that. 
I simply do not wish to embarrass my mental attitude 
by accepting miracles where a natural explanation 
is possible, and it seems to me that spirits are the 
more natural and the less miraculous agency in the 
case, though telepathy certainly has the claim of 
social respectability. 



CHAPTER X 

THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 

The first thing which I wish to say in taking up the 
spiritistic hypothesis and in stating my preference 
for it, at present at least, is that I wish to empha- 
sise the conditions upon which I accept it. I take it 
to be the best working hypothesis in the field to ex- 
plain the phenomena concerned. Others may think 
it absolutely proved, but I shall not claim so much 
nor place myself where further inquiry and knowl- 
edge might embarrass a retreat, though I think that 
most intelligent men will agree that no other hypoth- 
esis presents half the credentials of rationality that 
can be claimed for spiritistic agency. We may hesi- 
tate to adopt it in the face of perplexities which are 
certainly striking and apparently incompatible with 
what we find many people expecting from spirits. 
We may wish to know more before committing our- 
selves finally to so important a belief, but this cau- 
tiousness and hesitation is not in conflict with the 
admission that the most rational explanation at pres- 
ent is the spiritistic. Our primary duty is to accept 
the hypothesis that best explains the fact and then 
to abandon it when facts are discovered that disprove 
or discredit it. I shall certainly not cling to the 
spiritistic theory any longer than the facts justify, 
but I shall not eschew it because it is not respectable 
when it is the most rational conception in the field. 

267 



268 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

The difficulties and objections to telepathy as an 
explanation of such phenomena as are here discussed 
are negative arguments for the spiritistic theory. In- 
asmuch as I have practically limited the choice of 
explanation to telepathy and spirits, any facts dis- 
crediting telepathy must be so much in favor of the 
alternative hypothesis. If they disprove the ration- 
ality of telepathy they make spiritism necessary for 
any man who chooses to have an explanation at all, 
even though they may not be construed as positive 
evidence for it. Some of the objections which I 
have mentioned as telling against telepathy represent 
psychological facts that are consistent only with the 
supposition of spirits, so far as we now know telepathy 
and its assumed nature, and they have been mentioned 
in the previous chapter in order to indicate clearly 
the cumulative character of the difficulties in the way 
of that explanation. The reader has only to think 
of them in relation to the psychological activity of 
minds as we know them to see that they would char- 
acterise properly the identical mental action which 
we would expect to find in the discarnate. But I 
shall add three positive arguments for the spiritistic 
hypothesis which I may discuss briefly. They are 

(1) the selective unity of consciousness exhibited; 

(2) the dramatic play of personality, and (3) the 
character of the mistakes and confusions. 

1. The Unity of Consciousness 

Many phenomena that are popularly regarded as 
spiritistic have no value for a spiritistic theory, 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 269 

even if supposed to be genuine. The mere move- 
ments of physical objects without contact, if they 
are even possible or credible, would have no evidential 
value in favor of spirits, as they do not indicate 
the personal identity which is essential to that proof. 
What we must have is psychological phenomena, and 
psychological phenomena of that kind which repre- 
sents the systematic mental action natural to the 
person whose existence is in question. Isolated super- 
normal phenomena will not do, such as can be ex- 
plained by telepathy. We must have a group of 
facts whose unity and consistency suggest a real per- 
son more easily than anything else. This class of 
facts is represented in those which show what I have 
called the unity of consciousness. By this unity of 
consciousness I mean the selection of facts with refer- 
ence to the proof of personal identity. If a man be 
called upon to prove his identity across a telegraph 
line he would choose those incidents in his life recog- 
nisable by the receiver as the sender's own experiences, 
and they would be chosen with reference to their per- 
tinence for both sender and receiver. The unity is 
then that characteristic which we find in any memory 
recalling past experiences. The facts so recalled are 
associated together. In the Piper and similar cases 
this unity is perfectly evident, and if it is not found 
in minds outside the mediums we have to attribute to 
Mrs. Piper's mind the power to select from living 
memories the facts which will appear to represent a 
given person, the selection and unity being deter- 
mined by some other mind than the one that purports 
to be communicating. 



270 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

I may illustrate briefly what I mean. If the reader 
will recur to the incidents which I have narrated as 
purporting to come from my father, deceased, he 
will observe that group of them (p. 217) relating to 
our conversations on the subject of psychic research 
before his death. Here were a number of incidents 
belonging to that conversation, the reference to hal- 
lucination, my doubts, thought transference, Sweden- 
borg, hypnotism, apparitions, and dreams with some 
experiments of my own. They are incidents which 
a personal consciousness might naturally be expected 
to recall and tell, but which we should not expect any 
telepathic process to do. Take also the simple fact 
that all the names of the members of the family were 
correctly given in the form in which the " communica- 
tor " was accustomed in life to name them, and in 
addition to this, incidents were correctly associated 
with those names. For instance, as indicated above 
(p. 219), I was reminded of the organ and my sister 
Lida and the desire of the " communicator " that this 
sister should learn to sing. All this was true and 
represented the association of incidents in my father's 
memory as well as mine. It is quite as easy to sup- 
pose that the association is spiritistic as that it is 
telepathic, especially when we observe that we have 
not the slightest evidence that telepathy is associative 
in its acquisitions. We have found telepathy, if it be 
admitted at all, to represent association within the 
experiences of the percipient, but not to select and 
organise associations in the mind of the agent. Such 
a process is without any scientific support whatever. 

The reader of the records will also remark another 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 271 

fact of interest. It is the connection of incidents 
from sitting to sitting. The " communicator " will 
fail at one time to get his incident rightly and come 
back to it at a later time and correct it. Or he may 
get it right at the first attempt and return to it later 
for giving additional matter or ascertaining whether 
his message has been received or not. Throughout 
the experiments there is this natural psychological 
connection between the incidents, and perhaps as in- 
teresting a psychological fact as any is that which 
indicates this connection consistently carried out 
through all the distinctions of personality in different 
" communicators." There is no confusion of these, 
except apparently when some one acts as an inter- 
mediary for another, and this is very often accom- 
panied by the statement that the incidents belong to 
another than the intermediary, so that the distinction 
of personalities is kept up. I have called attention 
to the changes of " communicators " and it is in con- 
nection with this phenomenon that the characteristic 
occurs which I am intimating. The cleavage of per- 
sonalities in the " communications " is effected in 
entire consistency with the difference between real 
personalities, and no confusion occurs except that 
which is involved in the attempt now and then to act 
as intermediary for some one else, and this confusion 
incident to such attempts indicates evidence of mental 
confusion on " the other side." But this confusion 
is not frequent in this form. There is often trace 
enough of the real form and intention of the " com- 
munication " to discover that another personality than 
the " communicator " is meant by it. As illustration 



$Ti% SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of this I may take the incident of the chimney nar- 
rated above (p. 229). Here it was clearly indicated 
that the event referred to had occurred after the 
death of the " communicator " and that it had been 
learned from hearing my father and mother talking 
about it, they being the two deceased persons and 
perhaps the only two deceased persons whom I would 
expect to mention the chimney naturally in evidence 
of identity. Both the cleavage of personalities and 
the unity of consciousness are illustrated by such 
incidents. 

As a general instance of this unity let me take the 
incidents associated with the sitting with Miss X. and 
thirty-six hours later with Mrs. Piper. The allusion 
to the pass sentence or " test," the reference to " mes- 
senger " and to a trance along with the giving my 
father's Christian name and relationship we definitely 
associate with the phenomena that had been given 
me through Mrs. Piper two or three years before, and 
involved the use of ideas that were more natural to 
the operations in another world than to this one. 
Then the reference to the color of my wife's eyes, 
repeated thirty-six hours afterward through Mrs. 
Piper and the completion of the story in the latter as 
it was not completed in the former. All this repre- 
sents a natural unity for a surviving consciousness and 
would not be anything expected of telepathy. 

The detailed record alone will supply a clear idea 
of what this unity of consciousness means, as the frag- 
mentary summary which has here been given does 
not illustrate the complications and the confusions 
in the midst of which the supernormal facts lie buried, 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS JTO 

and hence I must refer those who are interested in 
a complete conception of this argument to the re- 
ports. But one can appreciate what is meant by it 
in general in any of the incidents that represent a 
complex set of details belonging together and asso- 
ciated with some other incident of similar complexity. 
In this characteristic they show an intelligent asso- 
ciation of acts that first recovers chance from the 
explanation and equally eliminates telepathy unless we 
ascribe it nothing but the power to imitate discarnate 
spirits ; a curious conception for those who wish to use 
it as an opposing explanation, when the requirement 
should be that it should explain phenomena to which 
spirits are not applicable at all and, in explaining 
them, show capacities making it rational and prob- 
able that they extend to what can be explained by 
spirits without doubt. In other words, telepathy must 
be the broader theory while it actually applies to the 
facts involving its extension, and this involution of 
such phenomena as I have summarised is not sup- 
ported by anything known of telepathy between the 
living, a telepathy which, when it exists at all, ex- 
hibits not the slightest trace of this selective access 
to one's mind and synthetising of the facts acquired 
in a devilish simulation of personalities which do not 
exist on the supposition of telepathy. 

2. The Dramatic Play of Personality 

In order to understand what I have called the 
dramatic play of personality it will be necessary to 
explain somewhat briefly the purported machinery 



274 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

by which the results are obtained. We must remem- 
ber that in most mediums there is what is called a 
" control," and this " control " purports to be a dis- 
carnate spirit. Whether it is this or not is imma- 
terial to the issue now concerned. The superficial 
character of the phenomena is the same on any theory. 
In the Piper case the " controls " are a group of 
alleged discarnate spirits, most of whom have never 
even attempted to prove their personal identity. One 
of them, Dr. Phinuit Scliville, tried it and failed. 
George Pelham, who had died only a short time be- 
fore, succeeded in proving his identity. The rest of 
the group calling themselves Imperator, Rector, Doc- 
tor, Mentor, and Prudens, and who had been the 
" guides " or " controls " in the case of Stainton 
Moses, a medium in England and who died in 1892, 
have never attempted to prove their identity through 
Mrs. Piper, though they gave their real names 
through Stainton Moses before his death. They 
claim to supervise the work with Mrs. Piper on the 
" other side." George Pelham acts as an assistant 
in their work. Now it must be conceivable that, if 
this is true, we should expect that any difficulties 
associated with the " communications " would be ac- 
companied by various intrusions of conversation and 
remarks on the " other side " not intended to be 
" communicated," but which would slip through nev- 
ertheless, just as irrelevancies often occur in the tele- 
phone when lines are crossed or conditions favor a 
confusion and interruption of messages. The same 
thing is familiar in a medical consultation about a 
patient. Much is said that is not the work of the 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 275 

patient. Similarly in the confusion of " communi- 
cations " incidents of what goes on among the group 
of intermediaries slip through and sometimes state- 
ments meant to indicate explanation of difficulties, 
etc. 

There are two types of phenomena connected with 
the dramatic play of personality. They are what 
may be called the evidential and the non-evidential 
matters of such interferences. The evidential in- 
stances consist of matter, such as names and incidents 
which may be given by other personalities than the 
usual " control." The non-evidential instances con- 
sist of statements representing conversation of the 
" control " either with the alleged discarnate spirit 
and not intended as a part of the regular " com- 
munications," or with the sitter in explanation of 
conditions and difficulties on the " other side." I shall 
give a few illustrations of both so that the reader may 
understand the phenomenon which I represent by this 
dramatic play. The unevidential incidents are not 
necessarily supernormal and might be explicable by 
secondary personality. The evidential incidents and 
illustrations of it are not explicable by secondary per- 
sonality alone and must be explained by the same 
process that explains all other supernormal matter. 

Just at the beginning of a sitting Rector, acting as 
" control " at the time, apparently said to the " com- 
municator " who purported to be my father, " Speak 
clearly, sir. Come over here." The reply was 
" Yes," as if intending to obey Rector's injunction, 
and then Dr. Hodgson was accosted with the question : 
" Are you with James ? " On Dr. Hodgson's affirma- 



276 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

tive reply my father responds with an evident under- 
standing that he was to " communicate " with Dr. 
Hodgson in my absence, and the sitting went on. An- 
other instance was the response to a question of mine 
addressed to the " communicator " with the purpose 
of calling up his old religious associations and it led 
to an interesting recognition of my identity expressed 
to Rector but not to me, and yet it came as an ap- 
parent message. A passage which I had written out 
was read to Mrs. Piper's hand with explanation by Rec- 
tor that it would be gotten only in fragments, this 
being the mode of communicating with the intelligence 
claiming to be a spirit, and the immediate reply was: 
" Perfectly. Yes, that is surely James." The 
" perfectly " was the " communicator's " indication to 
Rector that he had gotten the message from me 
clearly, and the rest was an acknowledgment of my 
identity in finding the sentiment like me. On an- 
other occasion my uncle asked through Mrs. Piper if 
Dr. Hodgson was " Robert's son " and then asked if 
he was " George," the name of my brother, Robert be- 
ing that of my father. When Dr. Hodgson dis- 
avowed the relationship and I said I was not George 
the reply came : " No, James, I know you very well, 
but this other one, did you know the boys? Do you 
know me ? " 

The interesting part of this play of personality is 
the fact that telepathy should not have had any diffi- 
culty in recognising Dr. Hodgson in the case ; neither 
should secondary personality have had any such ap- 
parent difficulty. Dr. Hodgson had known Mrs. Pi- 
per for twelve years and he was familiar with both 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 211 

her normal and her trance state, so that it is singular 
that a telepathic agent of such alleged powers should 
fail to recognise him at once and his relation to me 
and my father and uncle. It has to be inexpressibly 
fiendish to counterfeit the reality in this manner. 

There were a number of these interferences by 
George Pelham. He is generally better at getting 
proper names than Rector and on occasions when these 
give difficulty George Pelham is likely to be called in 
to assist. Let me take some illustrations of this. 

There had been some difficulty and confusion from 
the start in getting the name of my cousin, Robert 
McClellan, calling it " Allen," " McCollum," " Mc- 
Allen," etc. On one occasion when this cousin was 
trying to " communicate " he gave the name of 
George Pelham in full and said that he, George Pel- 
ham, was assisting him to " communicate." A mo- 
ment later, right in the midst of a " communication " 
which was greatly confused, George Pelham suddenly 
interjects the exclamation: "Look out, Hodgson, I 
am here, George Pelham. Imperator sent me some 
moments ago." Then in a few minutes, while Rector 
was struggling to get the name McClellan clear, and 
could only get " McAllen," George Pelham breaks in 
and says : " Sounds like McLellen, George Pelham," 
and my cousin acknowledges its correctness by saying : 
" Yes, I am he." 

On another occasion there had been great difficulty 
in getting my half-sister's name, and suddenly there 
was the interference : " Hettie, George Pelham." I 
give another complex instance of it. 

There was great difficulty in getting my uncle 



278 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

James Carruthers' name. I had asked that it be 
spelled out. This was repeated to my father by 
Rector and his act was rewritten as if a message to 
me, this being an automatic act of Mrs. Piper's hand 
which Rector apparently could not prevent. The 
attempt to get my uncle's name clearly then began, 
and failing in the first effort Rector said to the 
" communicator," " What is it ? Go on," and paused 
a moment, as it were, and apparently said to me, the 
sitter, " That certainly sounds like Clark." He then 
said to the " communicator," " Do not worry about 
it, but keep to it, my friend." The struggle contin- 
ued a little longer with much confusion in my father's 
direct effort to give it, and when I indicated that it 
was hardly right, Rector said, that he had not spelled 
it rightly. The next day the attempt to give it was 
repeated with the same result, and suddenly George 
Pelham broke in : " How are you, Hodgson," and 
on recognition he went on to say, " He (Imperator) 
sent me in for a moment to say I told it to the spirit 
of the light as she went out." Pelham then explained 
that he would return and give it later. It was given 
later as Mrs. Piper came out of the trance. My step- 
mother's name was also given in as dramatic a manner 
as this uncle's name and by this same George Pel- 
ham. 

This cleavage of personalities and interference and 
interruption of the messages in the manner described 
represents a dramatic action quite natural in the 
situation, and there is no need of it on the telepathic 
hypothesis. In fact telepathy is no explanation of it 
whatever. The material is not drawn from the sitter's 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 279 

mind, as it is not engaged in any such dramatic play. 
In fact the data lie perfectly simple in the sitter's 
mind and there ought not to be any more difficulty 
for telepathy in getting these data in one case than 
another. The dramatic play is, therefore, an en- 
tirely supererogatory affair considered from the point 
of view of telepathy, but a most natural thing from 
the point of view of spirits and their confessed diffi- 
culty in communicating. We may consider it as sec- 
ondary personality and seek the analogy in some of 
our dreams, which certainly exhibit the dramatic play 
of personality in a remarkable manner. But this 
resource for explanation is wanting in the dramatic 
play which is accompanied by evidential incidents 
such as the giving of proper names. Here we have 
the supernormal that cannot be accounted for by sec- 
ondary personality and a dramatic play not neces- 
sary to telepathy. The only rationality and consist- 
ency in the interpretation of the phenomenon is in the 
spiritistic theory. 

The argument, however, from the dramatic play 
of personality is not of a primary character. It con- 
firms, and does not primarily prove the spiristic the- 
ory. We should expect it on the spiritistic theory, 
where difficulty and confusion occur and we should 
not expect it on any application of telepathy, even 
though it were accompanied by difficulties. The pri- 
mary argument must always be the supernormally 
acquired facts and their illustration of the unity of 
consciousness involved. The dramatic play of person- 
ality comes in to confirm that argument and to make 
a greater degree of complexity in the phenomena 



280 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

consistent with a single hypothesis. If the dramatic 
play of personality were a feature of all subliminal 
work and of all supernormal phenomena the case 
might be different, but it is not an essential charac- 
teristic of either of these, and so comes most naturally 
as an accompaniment of spiritistic phenomena. 

3. Character of the Mistakes and Confusions 

In the experiments for testing the existence of te- 
lepathy we found certain types of half successes and 
failures, which were evidence of the influence of the 
percipient's mind upon the message received. In some 
cases this result amounted to almost an entire failure, 
so great was the influence of the percipient's mind. 
Here there was confusion. But in the " communica- 
tions " of the Piper case no such confusion is recog- 
nisable. The mistakes are of a wholly different type. 
They are due to a possible variety of causes still to 
be considered, and in this later consideration of mis- 
takes will be found a confirmation of what is to be 
said here. But there are certain mistakes which are 
inconsistent with telepathy and which can be appre- 
ciated without any large assumptions in regard to 
their causes. 

A most natural phenomenon on the spiritistic the- 
ory would be a defect of memory on the part of the 
discarnate spirit. If the physiological theory of 
memory be correct no memory whatever could survive 
the shock of death, and personal identity would be 
impossible even though the substance of the soul 
perished. But on any theory of consciousness that 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 281 

admitted a soul other than the brain, memory might be 
affected by death, as we find it affected in life by 
physical accidents, even though not lost. But on the 
telepathic hypothesis there is no reason for expecting 
any characteristics in the " communications " that 
suggest defects of memory, especially when the actual 
mistakes are committed in the face of a clear memory 
and often of a clear consciousness of the facts at the 
time of the sitting. Let me give some illustrations. 

I had asked about an old neighbor by the name of 
Samuel Cooper with the hope that a certain incident 
in the life of my father in connection with that man 
would be recalled. But instead I received for answer 
a number of statements wholly false regarding this 
Samuel Cooper, but which I later discovered to be 
true of a Dr. Joseph Cooper, and not in my mind or 
memory at all. At one of the sittings a reference 
was made by my father to " the Cooper School and 
his interest there." He was said to be present and my 
father continued : " And perhaps you will recall a 
journey we took together." 

Now the interest in this message is this : A memo- 
rial school had been built to this Dr. Joseph Cooper 
after his death in 1886, and was mentioned in a paper 
which my father took in 1887. But my father and 
my stepmother took a journey in 1884 to the west 
and were in the town in Kansas where this memorial 
college was built. The evident reading of the " com- 
munication " is that this Dr. Cooper and my father 
took the journey, which was not true, as my father 
seems never to have seen the man after 1860. I had 
no knowledge of the facts and no living person had 



282 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

it of the facts as told, so that there is no excuse 
for the mistake on the telepathic hypothesis. 

On one occasion I had asked what my uncle had 
died with and it was two years before I received the 
correct answer. But the immediate answer involved 
the statement first that Robert had gotten his foot 
injured on the railroad, and then it was afterward 
ascribed to Frank, both Robert and Frank being 
names of my brothers. With reference to them, how- 
ever, the statements were false. Mv brother Frank 
had had an injured leg, but it was not caused in any 
connection with a railway. My brother Robert never 
had any such injury. But my uncle about whom I 
had asked the question had had his leg cut off or 
nearly off at the ankle by a railway car and died from 
the effects of the operation a few hours later. No 
living memory had the facts as they were told, while 
their correct form was not given. This is not a nat- 
ural phenomenon of telepathy, but something that 
would be the natural result of either a disturbed mem- 
ory or disturbances in the " communications." 

I might also mention the mistake made in reference 
to my stepmother's name. The first attempt to give 
it was " Mannie," she having always been called Mag- 
gie by my father. But it became " Nannie " after 
one or two attempts, and I discovered the possible 
mistake by the fact that when my aunt by the name 
of Nannie was mentioned in the " communications " 
the prefix " aunt " was always found, and when facts 
were mentioned that referred to my stepmother and 
not to my aunt Nannie, this prefix " aunt " was omit- 
ted. I resolved to have the name given correctly 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 283 

and said at a later sitting that my stepmother's name 
had been confused with that of my aunt Nannie. The 
resulting attempt to give it correctly, along with some 
remarkable dramatic play of personality, was the 
name Margaret, which was of course correct, but not 
the form customary to my father in life, though quite 
natural here after my explanation of his error. In 
all this process the matter was of course perfectly 
clear in my mind and the mistake without excuse from 
telepathy. 

Again, if Mrs. Piper has such wonderful powers 
of clairvoyance and telepathic access to information 
why did she not tell what was in the spectacle case 
which I had left with Dr. Hodgson to be placed on 
the table? Why also could she not tell what was 
in the little piece of paper in this spectacle case when 
it was opened? She failed in this last though the pa- 
per was in her fingers ! 

There are many such mistakes which are easily at- 
tributable to the limitations under which spirits must 
communicate, but which are not compatible with the 
telepathic powers that have to be assumed to explain 
the successes. The reader will have to go to the de- 
tailed records for the study of cases more complicated 
than any that I have quoted, and that also contain 
much evidence at the same time of supernormal phe- 
nomena in the midst of which the mistake and con- 
fusion occur. 



284 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

4. Facts Making it a Possibility 

A fourth consideration in favor of the spiritistic 
hypothesis should be mentioned. It was omitted from 
the list given at the beginning of this chapter be- 
cause it represents facts which cannot in any way 
be treated as evidence of spirits as facts, but only 
as possible " communicators." I alluded to the gen- 
eral possibility of " communication " when stating the 
problem, and I merely repeat the points here with ad- 
ditions. The starting point is the fact of hyperes- 
thesia. This means acute sensibility in various condi- 
tions of the physical organism, and acute sensibility 
sometimes enables the subject to perceive what cannot 
be normally perceived at all. This is then a condition 
in which the power of the mind to receive impressions 
from without is heightened and information may be 
obtained that the normal person cannot appreciate. 
But this hyperesthesia may take a still more interest- 
ing form. It has been noticed in recent years, and 
exploited to some extent by Dr. Boris Sidis, that there 
are cases where ordinary anesthesia has been produced 
and in which a kind of sensibility continues which may 
be called subliminal hyperesthesia in contradistinction 
to ordinary anesthesia, which is known as insensi- 
bility to impressions. Some cases of abnormal condi- 
tions show that they are wholly insensible to external 
impressions, say of touch, sound, or vision, but yet in 
their secondary states can give as full an account 
of sensory stimuli as if they had felt them. This 
means that subliminal sensibility is perfectly compat- 
ible with supraliminal insensibility, and it is often 



THE SPIRITISTIC HYPOTHESIS 285 

remarked that this subliminal sensibility is very acute 
making its proper description as hyperesthesia. We 
find, too, that in suggestion the subject is extraor- 
dinarily acute and alert, and that its mental activities 
often surpass its ordinary capabilities. 

Now, if the mind can obtain information without 
the ordinary use of its physical sensibilities we have 
only to raise the question of its limitations in this re- 
spect in order to appreciate the claim that impressions 
come from a transcendental world. It is a condition 
that makes telepathy quite possible and conceivable 
within the limits of proved knowledge, and telepathy 
once admitted certainly involves either a hyperesthe- 
sia far beyond any that is known in abnormal psychol- 
ogy or some sensibility of a wholly different type. It 
does not matter whether it is an extended hyperesthe- 
sia or sensibility of a different kind. In either case 
the limits of knowledge received from without are 
greatly extended. Hence once accept telepathy in- 
volving this heightened sensibility to external influ- 
ences and the possible means of spirit communication 
are at hand, so far as any objection to its possibility 
can be urged, and it will only be a question of the kind 
of facts obtained whether we have been en rapport 
with the discarnate. 

The process involved in the " communications " 
through Mrs. Piper is not yet known. It is popular- 
ly conceived as if it were direct speech, but the care- 
ful student of the detailed records will discover that 
the language employed does not consistently imply 
any such methods. It is often described as " this way 
of speaking," and still more frequently as " think- 



286 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ing," precisely the description of the telepathic meth- 
od. There are probably associated agencies involved. 
But I cannot here enter into any adequate account 
of how the communications are effected. I can only 
suggest that a study of the facts will show some right 
to approach the problem with the conceptions of hy- 
peresthesia and telepathic sensibility in view. 



CHAPTER XI 

DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS. 

I have already considered the primary objection to 
the spiritistic hypothesis and this is the telepathic the- 
ory. I do not require to mention or discuss it in this 
return to some minor difficulties which offer perplex- 
ity to the believer, without necessarily setting aside 
the cogency of the facts for some remarkable theory. 
I have also said all that I need say of chance coinci- 
dence and suggestion. These cannot pretend to ac- 
count for all the facts, and at most can only discredit 
occasional incidents which might be hastily assumed 
to have weight by those unfamiliar with phenomena 
of this kind. If they offered the slightest possibility 
of explaining all the facts we should feel bound to 
examine their claims at length. But after admitting 
their utmost claims they lamentably fail to make out 
any general explanation of the phenomena and we 
are obliged to resort to other objections if any hold 
good at all in the case. Such as I wish to notice here 
are not objections to the whole mass of phenomena as 
evidence of the supernormal, but only such as offer 
perplexities which must be explained in order to re- 
move doubt. They are difficulties in the theory of 
spiritism rather than objections to it. They repre- 
sent what the layman especially has to produce against 
conviction in so important a matter, and it must be 
admitted that they are also perplexities for the scien- 

287 



288 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

tific inquirer until he becomes familiar with the pecul- 
iarities of the problem. 

1. Failures of Various Sitters. 

The reader of the detailed records will be struck 
with the fact that some experimenters were wholly 
without results in favor of anything supernormal, 
and in a few cases were so impressed with the ques- 
tionableness of the phenomena as to suspect fraud. 
Others who were convinced that there was no fraud 
were disappointed in their results. Now why this 
failure of some people to get " communications " 
from their deceased friends? Why not something, 
even if the messages are not overwhelming? 

I think that there is no difficulty in answering this 
objection. It is presumption for us to suppose that, 
if spirits exist, they ought to communicate easily and 
uniformly. But it is important to remark that most 
of the failures on record are connected with persons 
who had only one experiment. But it is absurd to 
judge a case like this by any single experiment, and 
some of those who had failures recognised this fact, 
and too much is made out of the failure by those who 
do not stop to think of the conditions involved or of 
the fact that the best successes represent whole series 
of sittings. If I had passed final judgment on the 
phenomena as a result of my first sitting, I should 
have had a less favorable verdict to pronounce, as the 
first experiment, though by no means a failure in 
regard to the supernormal, did not supply enough for 
any scientific man bent on proving a vast theory. In 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS. 289 

this subject we must not expect the supernormal to 
be on tap always and everywhere and for every one. 
If it were so we should have more of the phenomena 
in history than we now have. The phenomena are 
comparatively sporadic, and we must expect failures 
in many experiments. The personal equation must 
figure in this work as in other investigations. All 
that failures indicate is that there are difficulties as- 
sociated with the supernormal acquisition of knowl- 
edge, and we should recognise that, perhaps, these 
difficulties are as great and numerous on the " other 
side " as on this. There is no reason to suppose from 
the nature of things that spirits, if they exist, could 
all communicate with equal ease. On the contrary we 
should more naturally wonder how any communica- 
tion was possible, and probably it is the tacit and 
unconscious recognition of this doubt that inclines so 
many to non-spiritistic theories to account for the 
facts. But there is certainly no fatality in the re- 
corded failures where there have been any manifest 
successes. The case must rest on the fact of the 
supernormal, and negative cases do not affect the 
question. They diminish the quantity of evidence, 
but they do not vitiate the positive evidence actually 
obtained. 

2. Failures m the " Communications " 

It is often noticed that " communicators " fail to 
give just what is most expected of them, and often 
what they do give so coincides with the knowledge 
of the sitter and fails to produce what the sitter 



290 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

does not know, that the query is raised whether 
telepathy may not most easily account for the phe- 
nomena. But the reader of the records will find so 
many things given that were not known by the ex- 
perimenter but were known by other living persons 
that the temptation arises to extend the process of 
telepathy sufficiently to account for the phenomena 
and to exclude the necessity of supposing spirits to be 
the cause. The records also show cases where state- 
ments of fact were made which were once true and 
known to the sitter or other living person, but not true 
at the time of the statement. This suggests telepa- 
thy again. But such facts, important as they are 
as matters to be explained, do not suffice to dis- 
credit spiritism. There is no reason to suppose that 
spirits are omniscient, and there is no sufficient reason 
to necessitate the supposition that they must ac- 
quire information of events and things, of which we 
would like to know, after their death. Thus some one 
is asked to tell where a certain trinket is to be found 
and the place is told by the medium. It turns out 
that the object had been there, the fact being known 
by some one living, but is not there now (p. 169). 
This is certainly a curious limitation of knowledge. 
But it is not an objection to the spiritistic interpre- 
tation of the correct facts. There is no reason to 
suppose a spirit knows everything, especially if much 
or all of its information obtained after death has to 
be telepathically obtained from the living, which is 
certainly a plausible possibility. But failures of the 
kind mentioned are too few to make them so impor- 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS. 291 

tant. Their curious coincidence in some cases with 
the limitations of telepathy is the only fact that ex- 
cites an interest in them, while they are often ex- 
plicable on grounds quite compatible with the assump- 
tion of spirits. 

But the one type of failure which exercises, and 
rightly, a powerful influence in favor of scepticism 
and so of telepathy is the Hannah Wild incident 
(p. 189). The reader will recall that in this case 
a posthumous letter was not given while the words 
that were uttered when the letter was handed to the 
surviving sister were given almost correctly. Five 
attempts to give the contents of the letter failed. 
Here we have a case where the limitations of existing 
human knowledge were the limitations of telepathy 
when presumably a spirit ought to have succeeded. 
There is no denying the interest of this phenomenon, 
and if it is fatal to the spiritistic theory the fact 
has to be frankly admitted. 

But whatever the force of the objection in this 
incident, we must not forget that it is the only pub- 
lished incident of the kind, except one (p. 63) which 
succeeded. There might be many reasons for fail- 
ure in this case which might not apply in others. If 
the failures of this kind were numerous and uniform 
the objection would have great weight. But a sin- 
gle incident like this, important as it may be, is not 
by any means a conclusive objection to the spiritistic 
theory to account for the supernormal facts. There 
may be many important reasons for such a failure, 
and when we come to examine in the next chapter 



292 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

the conditions affecting the " communications " we 
shall discover abundant reasons for understanding 
even frequent failures in matters of this kind. 

But telepathy cannot boast of any special triumph 
in the Hannah Wild incident. The contents of that 
letter have been known to Professor James for fifteen 
or sixteen years, and Mrs. Piper knows the fact, but 
the letter has never yet been given, when, if telepathy 
can command all living memories and can carry on 
such a selective and fiendish process of deception it 
should long since have obtained the desired informa- 
tion. Telepathy has failed quite as much as spirits to 
give the contents. 

Another important fact may explain the failure of 
the supposed spirit to tell the contents of the letter. 
It is conceivable that death may give rise to defective 
memory, or that if death does not in reality cause 
amnesia generally that the conditions for " communi- 
cating " may rise to disturbances in reproduction. 
Nothing is more probable on the physiological theory 
of memory. But, granting that even these are not 
true, we are perfectly familiar with defective mem- 
ories among the living in just such emergencies. 
Much depends upon the time and circumstances in 
which such things first occurred, and as much depends 
upon the kind of interest and emphasis which the 
facts of record had when written down. We do not 
remember all we say or think, and we do not remember 
all that we try to remember. Hence there are many 
possible causes for failure in this case. 

I shall give an instance of my own. I wrote out 
several posthumous letters containing very frequently 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 293 

recalled incidents of my childhood with the intention 
of having them as tests after my death. I inclosed 
them in several envelopes so that the giving of one 
would not involve any knowledge by the living of 
other records before attempts were made to deliver 
the rest. Put this aside as unimportant. A year 
and a half after putting them on record I had for- 
gotten absolutely every one of the incidents that I had 
recorded. They were incidents purposely chosen be- 
cause I so often recalled them in thinking of my 
childhood, as I well knew the dangers of amnesia or 
failure of memory. Consequently I had to put on 
record the fact that I had forgotten them. Some six 
months afterward, while writing an account of my 
childhood, I recalled nearly all the incidents and now 
I have to put that circumstance on record. Since 
then, however, I have again forgotten some of them. 
The incidents are no doubt perfectly recallable, and 
the only difficulty is that their association with my in- 
tention to communicate them after death, if possible, 
is not strong enough to make their reproduction easy. 
But in the fact we have precisely what may have hap- 
pened with Miss Wild. She probably took no ac- 
count of the laws of memory when she wrote her 
posthumous letter, and wrote just what came into her 
mind at the time, something that seemed important 
and memorable then, but easily forgotten and hard to 
recall when the associative clues were dim. 

It was perhaps quite natural to have recalled the 
words uttered when handing the letter to her sister, 
as that was the critical moment and the evident emo- 
tional interest which her words showed indicate how 



294 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

the impression could have been made on the memory. 
Significant is the fact that the words were not exactly 
as stated on that occasion. The general thought was 
the same and suggests that the process involved more 
than a passive production of living memory. There 
was nothing in a spontaneous remark on such an 
occasion to necessarily connect it with the contents 
of the letter, which might have been a very common- 
place affair and the outcome of a capricious thought 
at the time it was written. Such things are easily 
forgotten. 

Add to these considerations the fact that the condi- 
tions for communicating are supposed to affect the 
power of memory at the time and in some cases to 
throw it into entire confusion, and we have a situation 
where much besides posthumous letters will be forgot- 
ten. I shall devote the next chapter to the discussion 
of this question alone, and allude to it only as a possi- 
bility or as a part of the spiritistic theory to be care- 
fully considered, not to be repudiated without a hear- 
ing. But careful readers and students of the 
detailed records will probably find more abundant evi- 
dence, psychologically considered, for this part of the 
theory than for the supernormal, and once accepted as 
a factor in the problem we would not attach very 
much negative value to the Hannah Wild incident 
standing alone. 

3. Telepathy and Secondary Personality Combined 

There are two kinds of matter in the records, the 
evidential and the non-evidential, the one proving the 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 295 

existence of supernormal knowledge and the other 
not proving anything. The objection which I have 
just formulated means that the evidential part shall 
be explained by telepathy from other minds than the 
medium's and that the non-evidential matter shall be 
explained by unconscious mental action of the me- 
dium, as in dreaming or other similar mental action. 
This supposes that the medium's mind is in an active 
state of secondary personality and that outside mes- 
sages from other minds are spasmodically and capri- 
ciously intromitted into hers at favorable moments for 
their reception. But the trouble with this theory is 
the fact that it encounters all the difficulties of the 
unity of consciousness in favor of spirits and the pro- 
duction of matter representing the personal identity of 
deceased persons. It is the selectiveness of the process 
that makes telepathy absurd in the case, no matter 
how much secondary personality may be involved in 
the non-evidential material. Telepathy is thus dis- 
qualified without impeaching the assumption of sec- 
ondary personality. 

But the admission of secondary personality in the 
case is not so easy or to be made without evidence 
any more than spirits or telepathy. What we mean 
by secondary personality is mental action not intro- 
spected by the normal consciousness and hence either 
the product of memory or the result of a dream-like 
action creating systematic ideas as in reflection. Now 
there is not the slightest trace of this sort of thing 
in the Piper records. The dramatic play of per- 
sonality, though possibly accountable by secondary 
personality, is so intricately interwoven with the evi- 



296 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

dential matter as to be in reality a part of it, and in 
fact the unity of the evidential and non-evidential 
matter is the desirable conception of science in any 
theory which it adopts in explanation of the phenom- 
ena. But the important point to be made is the fact 
that there are no traces in the non-evidential matter of 
the influence of Mrs. Piper's mind or memory on the 
material recorded, except in what is called " Sublim- 
inal I " as she is coming out of the trance. In " Sub- 
liminal II," which is a deeper state and next to the 
trance itself there is no trace of her own mental action 
on the data. In this state she does not distinguish 
her own personality from the incidents " communi- 
cated," but reports automatically what she " hears " 
or " sees " and does not appear to be a spectator or 
auditor of it. In " Subliminal I " she apparently 
recognises that what she " hears " or " sees " is ob- 
jective to her, and at times an occasional memory or 
secondary personality element will be intromitted into 
messages coming from the " other side." When she 
awakens from the trance, or emerges from " Sublimi- 
nal I," she has no recollection of what has occurred 
either in the trance or in either of the " Subliminals." 
But at no point is there a trace of an influence from 
either the normal or the secondary consciousness on 
the data of the record until we reach the state of 
" Subliminal I." All this indicates that the assump- 
tion of secondary personality to account for the non- 
evidential matter is gratuitous. It may be true; it 
may be rational, if not true, to suppose it. But when 
it is so interwoven with evidential matter and is a 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 297 

natural part of the result on the spiritistic hypothesis, 
the assumption cannot be made with impunity, but 
must be required to sustain itself evidentially. It is 
not enough to say that secondary personality explains 
the non-evidential matter; for this may be granted. 
But we must know what definite evidence there is 
that it is a fact, if the phenomena are not to have 
the unity that they ought to have on the spiritistic 
theory. It is all very correct to discard non-evi- 
dential matter as secondary personality when we are 
studying the evidential side of the question, but when 
this is once satisfied in favor of the supernormal the 
next problem is to see if there is evidence for the 
secondary personality assumed to disqualify a part 
of the matter in the spiritistic problem, and every 
attempt to prove that the non-evidential matter in 
the Piper records is subconscious memories and fabri- 
cations wholly fails. 

We must remember also that, if the spiritistic 
theory be true at all, there would be non-evidential 
matter associated with the evidential as a necessary 
part of the whole. This would be the case in es- 
tablishing personal identity across a telegraph line, 
and would also follow in any communications of the 
kind we are considering. While we are justified in 
disregarding this material in the evidential problem 
we should not forget that this fact does not in the 
least eliminate it from consideration as a spiritistic 
phenomenon. The unity of the phenomena which 
must finally be the conception of them in any simple 
and true theory makes the non-evidential matter com- 



298 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

patible with the spiritistic theory, so that it can in no 
way be used as an objection to it. 

4. Triviality of the Incidents 

The one objection to the spiritistic hypothesis that 
possesses the sceptic most tenaciously and that per- 
plexes the layman is the triviality of the communi- 
cations. Most people feel this characteristic very 
keenly, especially because they assume that it indi- 
cates the grade of mental development on the part 
of the so-called discarnate. What seems unintelli- 
gible is the almost entire limitation of the " commu- 
nications " to the most trivial affairs of life, such as 
jackknives, skull caps, penholders, and references to 
small incidents of their lives. This appearance of a 
degenerated mental condition is interpreted as repre- 
senting an undesirable mode of existence, if the spirit- 
istic theory is to be adopted, and as in conflict with 
the personality of the persons as remembered by the 
living. We perhaps naturally expect some clear and 
elevating " communications " representative of the 
characters so well known to us when living, but in- 
stead of this we have inane and drivelling confusion 
and triviality, that we might expect of persons of a 
low intellectual order, or of persons out of their 
minds. Such a conception leaves nothing desirable in 
a post-mortem existence, and the majority of intelli- 
gent men and women wonder why we attach so much 
importance to the facts and why we treat the problem 
with such solemn seriousness and enthusiasm. 

This difficulty so universally felt and urged I mean 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 299 

to face without equivocation. I do not consider it 
an objection to the spiritistic hypothesis, but a per- 
plexity in the conception of it which we would per- 
haps most naturally form. It is not an objection 
because we have the facts to explain by some theory, 
and it is manifestly most absurd to suppose that telep- 
athy with its enormous powers should so uniformly 
limit itself to trivial matters, especially as it has to be 
conceived as satisfying the conceptions of the general 
public in simulating spirits in respect of their iden- 
tity. It ought to give not only what is wanted, if it 
is a Zeitgeist (Time spirit), but also the important 
and elevated facts, as easily gotten by the process pre- 
sumably, as the trivial incidents. There is no excuse 
whatever for the limitation to trivial incidents on the 
telepathic hypothesis. 

But there is another reason why triviality cannot 
be treated as an objection to spiritistic theories. If 
the facts make the spiritistic theory the only rational 
supposition possible to explain them it has to be ac- 
cepted whether desirable or not. Our business as 
scientists is not with the desirability of the next life, 
but with the fact of it. We have to accept the life 
to come, if it be a fact, without any ability to escape 
it, and its degenerated nature would not affect the 
evidence for the fact of it. Its being a madhouse or 
an asylum for idiots would not weaken the evidence 
for its existence. We should have to bear with it sto- 
ically, and perhaps if our moral lives were what they 
ought to be, that degenerate condition, if it be the 
natural consequence of action when living, might not 
follow. In any case, however, the desirability or un- 



300 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

desirability of a future existence has nothing to do 
with the scientific question whether it is a fact. This 
view of the matter cannot be evaded and it is irrefut- 
able. * 

But there is another reply to the alleged objection. 
Nothing but trivial incidents will prove personal iden- 
tity. If any one will stop long enough to think and 
to ask what incidents he would choose to prove his 
own identity over a telephone or telegraph wire he will 
readily discover that his spontaneous choice would be 
the most trivial incidents possible. With this in view, 
and knowing that human nature would select such in- 
cidents, I arranged a series of experiments over a 
telegraph line between two of the buildings at Co- 
lumbia University. I had my operators there and 
brought two acquaintances, one to one end of the wire 
and the other to the opposite end. A., of course, was 
to know that B. was present at the other end, but B. 
did not know that A. was present. A. was to send 
messages to B. without giving his name until B. dis- 
covered his presence and identity, or gave it up. I 
said nothing to any one about the primary object 
of my experiments, which was to ascertain experi- 
mental evidence on the question whether men would 
choose trivial incidents to prove their identity. The 
sequel was that these persons, students and professors 
in the university, uniformly chose even more trivial 
incidents than we generally get through Mrs. Piper 
for the same apparent purpose. In fact, if we 
judged from the intellectual character of the commu- 
nications over the wire, we could not distinguish 
Columbia University professors and students from 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 301 

bootblacks or street gamins. The record of my ex- 
periments was published with my report on the Piper 
case, and shows a very similar appearance. 

We must not forget that the ostensible character 
of the experiments is the proof of personal identity. 
The Imperator group of trance personalities, claim- 
ing to be spirits, manage their side of the work with 
definite reference to this proof of personal identity, 
and exhibit the same understanding of the problem 
that we insist upon. We. cannot interest ourselves 
in any side issues of intelligence and spirit life until 
we have proved the personal identity of deceased per- 
sons, and as nothing but trivial incidents in sufficient 
quantity will prove this we must recognize that the 
data professing to be spiritistic in their origin repre- 
sent the most rational and scientific conception of the 
problem. 

But the fact is that these are not the real and fun- 
damental reasons for the persistent triviality of the 
" communications." The reason lies far deeper in 
the nature of the conditions affecting them, which 
will be especially the subject of the next chapter. 
I cannot enter into any elaboration of this reason at 
present, but must postpone the reader's interest in it 
until the whole subject can be more exhaustively 
discussed. All that I want recognized for the pres- 
ent is the fact that I consider the reason for triviality 
to lie much deeper than the arguments which I have 
presented above. 

We must also remember that there has been a great 
deal of matter in the " communications " that is not 
trivial in any sense of the term, but owing to the 



302 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

nature of the problem, which demands evidential phe- 
nomena, we have been obliged to publish those records 
which contain the largest amount of detailed and 
trivial incidents, as necessary to the proof of the su- 
pernormal and then of the identity of discarnate 
spirits. No stress has been placed on matter and 
sentiments that are not trivial, as they are often non- 
evidential. Besides a fact associated with an impor- 
tant event in one's life loses much of its triviality by 
that connection and becomes an indication of high in- 
telligence, possibly, if chosen to prove identity. 

Let me, then, summarise the reply to the " objec- 
tion " of triviality, (a) The facts are not all trivial. 
Many of them are quite worthy of the best intelli- 
gence, and the predominance of the trivial is due to 
the persistence of the attempt to prove personal iden- 
tity under the abnormal conditions in which the 
" communications " are affected, (b) Many of the 
trivial incidents are in response to the sitter's ques- 
tions and involve the satisfaction of his demands. 
The irrationality must be shared with the living, 
(c) Many of the incidents follow upon the explana- 
tion to the " communicator " of what he is expected 
to do, he being reminded that he is to tell of little 
incidents in his earthly life, (d) The probable ab- 
normal condition of the " communicator's " mind in 
the act of " communicating." 

The last consideration is the most important one 
in the list and will be examined at length in the next 
chapter. It is in fact the true explanation of the 
general limitation of the messages to trivial facts, 
and I have mentioned other considerations because 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 303 

they would hold true if this one did not. But the 
most general cause of triviality and confusion and 
error is the probable abnormal mental condition of 
the " communicator " at the time of his " communi- 
cating." I shall here summarise the evidence on 
which the supposition is based and reserve the elab- 
orate proof and discussion of it until the next chap- 
ter. The facts suggesting mental difficulty in " com- 
municating " are as follows: (a) The alteration of 
"communicators," which ought not to occur on the 
telepathic hypothesis (b) The character of the 
" communications " oftentimes at the point of change 
from one "communicator" to another, (c) The 
frequently confused and fragmentary nature of many 
messages, (d) The absolute failure of some " com- 
municators " to communicate, although it would be as 
natural to expect them as any one. (e) The state- 
ments of the " communicators " themselves, both in 
regard to their confused state of mind when " com- 
municating " and their clearer consciousness when not 
" communicating." (f ) The analogies of hypnosis 
and secondary personality, and of abnormal mental 
states which are indicated by the character of the sub- 
ject's statements. 

5. The Absence of Information about the 
Transcendental Life 

I often meet this objection, but I refuse to rec- 
ognise its seriousness. In the first place it is not al- 
together true. Many statements are made in regard 
to the transcendental world, but being unverifiable 



304 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

are wholly worthless. Many statements also taken 
to represent the life beyond are not such at all, but 
delirious reflections caused by the disturbing condi- 
tions affecting the " communications." But even if 
these facts were not so, there is the main reason that 
the supposed abnormal condition necessary for " com- 
municating " would prevent any rational account of 
such a world. That is clear to every one, and all 
that we should have to do to enforce its recognition 
would be to give the evidence of that condition. 

But suppose the " communicator " to be perfectly 
clear in his mind when " communicating," there is 
no reason to suppose that he could give us any ra- 
tional account of such a life. All intelligent inter- 
course between living minds is based upon a com- 
mon sensory experience. Things are intelligible to us 
in terms of our sense experience and intelligible only 
in this in so far as it is communicable from one per- 
son to another. But the transcendental world is su- 
persensible and without distinct analogies with our 
physical world could not be described to us from the 
" other side." A supersensible experience cannot be 
expressed in sensible terms. A man born blind but 
retaining his hearing could not make his auditory ex- 
periences intelligible to a man born deaf, but retain- 
ing his sight, and vice versa. Visual experience can- 
not be expressed in terms of the auditory, or either 
of them in terms of the tactual. This, it is to be 
noticed, holds true right in our present physical life, 
and the same or greater difficulties must attend at- 
tempts to convey notions of a supersensible existence 
through sensory channels. Of course, if they were 



DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS 305 

conveyed they could not be verified and would have 
no value either scientifically or ethically. Their un- 
verifiability makes them useless for scientific purposes 
and their unintelligibility makes them useless for eth- 
ical purposes. 

The whole problem for science is the explanation of 
the facts at any cost, and it will not halt at their 
triviality when seeking an explanation, though it may 
recognise that there is an interesting perplexity to 
resolve in addition to the proof of personal identity. 



CHAPTER XII 

CONDITIONS AFFECTING THE " COMMUNICATIONS " 

I explained in the close of the previous chapter 
that it was the mental condition of the " communica- 
tor " while communicating that explained the triv- 
iality of the messages, and I might have added that 
the same fact explains the fragmentary and confused 
character of many of the messages, whether they be 
trivial or not. I wish here to take up and discuss 
at some length the conditions that give rise to those 
phenomena which have appeared to be such formid- 
able objections to the claim that the messages come 
from spirits. I regard the contention to be main- 
tained in this discussion to be the crux of the whole 
problem after satisfying the question of personal 
identity. As the perplexity occasioned by triviality 
and confusion is so great the issue depends in the 
same proportion upon the validity of the claim that 
is here to be advanced. But I shall not assume that 
all the perplexities are solved by one cause. I shall 
have many reasons to assign for the variety of diffi- 
culties and objections that are based upon triviality 
and confusion, as they are not all of them due to the 
same cause. But I wish here to group together a 
series of influences which make the spiritistic hypothe- 
sis perfectly intelligible and remove the objections 
of those who forget the complex and abnormal con- 
ditions under which experiments of this kind must be 

306 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 307 

conducted. They will be designed, some of them, to 
explain the confusion and fragmentary character of 
the messages, and some of them their triviality, but 
altogether they give rise to the features of the record 
that excite hesitation in accepting the spiritistic in- 
terpretation of the phenomena. They are (1) the 
intramediumistic conditions through which the mes- 
sages have to come, or the physical and mental con- 
ditions of the medium; (2) the intercosmic conditions 
existing between the " communicator " and those of 
the medium, and (3) the mental condition of the 
" communicators." The second of these divides into 
three classes, those affecting the transmission of a 
message from the ordinary "communicator " to the 
" control," those affecting the " control's " interpre- 
tation of the messages received, and those affecting 
the " control's " ability to send them through the 
medium's organism. 

1. Conditions Within the Medium Affecting 
" Communications " 

That there would be difficulties of some kind in 
" communicating " with discarnate spirits, accepting 
their existence as possible or a fact, would be a most 
natural admission to make. It would hardly require 
any proof to an intelligent man who understood the 
nature of the organism physical and mental through 
which messages had to be sent. The silence of all 
the ages would be proof of it, if they were known to 
exist, and the paucity of the evidence in cases where 
they claim to " communicate " is also conclusive proof 



308 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of it. But the fact would not require proof to any 
one. Only the kind of difficulty would be the sub- 
ject of dispute in any case. But if any one will re- 
flect for a moment on the difficulties of communicat- 
ing between two living persons he can imagine how 
much greater they must be between the living and 
the dead. First, they, the living, must be able to 
produce sensory impressions upon each other to carry 
on any intercourse whatever, except we suppose telep- 
athy be a vehicle for this, and we know how occa- 
sional this resource is. The normal method, how- 
ever, involves sense impressions of some kind, either of 
vision in a sign language written or gestural, or 
of hearing by sound. In some way the senses have 
to be affected. But even then little could be com- 
municated from mind to mind were it not for some 
previous agreement that certain vocal or visual signs 
should have a given meaning. Take two persons 
who have not the same language and the amount 
of communicable knowledge between them will be very 
small and that only by gestures of some kind. 

Now, if the difficulties of communicating normally 
between living people be so great as these when they 
have a definite and mutual knowledge of each other's 
existence, what must be the difficulties of communicat- 
ing between a supersensible and a sensible world 
where it would naturally be supposed that physical 
effects could not be produced from the material upon 
the immaterial world, granting the latter to exist, of 
course. Indeed, one might be pardoned for saying 
a priori that the phenomenon is impossible. Of 
course we cannot actually deny the possibility of 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 309 

some way of intercommunication between a supersen- 
sible and a sensible world, but the absence of it as a 
generally and clearly established fact makes it neces- 
sary to admit that the difficulty is evidently great. 
But the acceptance of telepathy between living minds 
establishes a possibility where all other analogies 
might fail, and hence the telepathist is precisely the 
man to admit the possibility of spirit communication 
with the living. 

If it be true that our minds are so insulated in nor- 
mal life from each other that they can carry on inter- 
course and communication with each other only by 
artificial and conventional means, except in sporadic 
instances of telepathy, it would be natural to sup- 
pose that discarnate minds are insulated from each 
other in some similar way as a means of preventing 
the occurrence of omniscient telepathic communica- 
tion between themselves. If telepathy were conceived 
as the common mode of communication either between 
the living or between the discarnate, it would repre- 
sent a complete reciprocity of interchange of thoughts 
which would have no limitations except the will of 
the parties concerned, if that could do it. But there 
is certainly no such reciprocity of intercourse between 
the living and the dead, if any communication even be 
possible. Hence on any assumption of modes of in- 
tercourse there are evidently difficulties in the way of 
its easy accomplishment. 

But suppose that in normal conditions of exist- 
ence the communication be easy, there is no guarantee 
that in abnormal conditions it would be the same, and 
from what we know of abnormal conditions in actual 



310 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

life the communication might still be difficult, especial- 
ly if the messages, when they come to us, must repre- 
sent something of the abnormal in them. But all this 
sparring aside, it is clear that communication with a 
discarnate world in our normal life is not a common 
thing and that in nearly all cases claiming to repre- 
sent it we have abnormal mental and physical con- 
ditions to contend with in obtaining any alleged in- 
tercourse. These abnormal conditions represent 
often some measure of inactivity of the normal con- 
sciousness or the suspense of its action on the mus- 
cular system, as in automatic writing, so that the 
messages when they have to penetrate to the physical 
world without direct mediation of the normal con- 
sciousness must rely upon either the subconscious 
function of the mind or upon the mechanical and 
automatic functions of the nervous system, respond- 
ing to outside mental influence much as it does to that 
of the incarnate mind, which in its suspension of 
control simply makes way for transcendental agency. 
Now, in Mrs. Piper's case, the medium, Mrs. Piper 
herself, is in a trance, a normally insensible and un- 
conscious state. Her mind is entirely passive and ap- 
parently exercises no influence whatever upon the 
physical organism, so that the messages apparently 
do not come through her mind. They certainly do 
not seem to be modified by any of its recognisable 
activity except in the last stages of her emergence 
from the trance. Consequently we have a condi- 
tion of things which is certainly infrequent for the 
communication of intelligent messages, and we should 
expect all sorts of difficulties in getting them through. 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 311 

They must be affected by the limitations of the me- 
dium through which they have to be sent. There is 
fairly good evidence that unfamiliar words and ex- 
pressions give great difficulty in the transmission. 
Though the process is apparently an automatic one 
a foreign language is almost impossible to it, and 
at one period in the development of the case the 
use of the left hand for writing messages had to be 
abandoned because Mrs. Piper had never used it for 
the purpose of writing, and apparently its organic 
habits did not suit it to the ready delivery of mes- 
sages in a supernormal way. Possibly the education 
of the medium operates as a condition and determi- 
nation of the limits of communication, at least to 
some extent. But in any view it is certain that the 
general limitations of the medium must represent 
those of the messages, and her condition being ab- 
normal these limitations are greatly increased. The 
effect might be to confuse messages, if it did not 
make them trivial. 

£. Intermediate Obstacles 

I include in intermediate obstacles to " communica- 
tion " the difficulties intervening between the " con- 
trol " and the medium's physical organisation, the 
modifying influence of the " control's " nature upon 
the messages received, and the intercosmic difficul- 
ties in sending the message from the " communi- 
cator " to the " control." These difficulties can be 
stated thus even though the " control " be consid- 
ered the secondary personality of the medium, as 



312 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

secondary personality often shows incomplete con- 
trol of the organism, and often modifies what the 
normal consciousness knows. But I shall discuss the 
case as if the trance personalities were as real spirits 
as those personalities may be assumed to be who prove 
their identity. 

That the first of these difficulties would exist might 
be inferred from what we know of the original diffi- 
culty in the child of controlling its muscles. It only 
gradually learns to co-ordinate them, as they have a 
tendency to act in capricious and impulsive modes. 
But gradually it learns to subject them to its com- 
mand. Others than the person possessing the or- 
ganism have no influence or control whatever, ex- 
cept by physical compulsion. Imagine, then, the 
obstacles in the way of a discarnate spirit attempting 
to use the muscles of a living organism for speech 
or writing. The owner had a long course of educa- 
tion and habit in the use of it when in closer rela- 
tion to it than any discarnate person can be supposed 
to obtain. Hence it is probable that a similar course 
of experience is necessary on the other side to ex- 
ercise any influence either on the organism directly 
or indirectly through the mind of the medium in a 
passive state to effect communication. In this we 
should expect all sorts of confusions and fragmentary 
messages, especially if the conditions for successful 
communication fluctuated in any manner. 

An influence that may affect the messages is also 
the mind of the " control." When the " commu- 
nicator " does not himself " control " the medium's 
organism all messages have to pass through the 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 313 

mind of the regular " control," and we know enough 
of the effect of a second mind on a story to recog- 
nise that modifications of messages are bound to take 
place in this way, and with no blameworthy fault of 
the mind through which they pass. If the " control " 
has to encounter any serious difficulties, as he prob- 
ably does, in receiving the messages for delivery to 
the sitter, he must use his interpreting judgment on 
their meaning and would inevitably implicate them 
in modifications, even to the extent of error. This 
statement is made on the assumption of analogies 
with our mode of communication with each other 
among the living. But we cannot assume this. On 
the contrary, we must suppose the mode of commu- 
nication there to be different, and if it is anything 
like telepathy, if the process of getting the mes- 
sage to the " control " is or resembles one of telep- 
athy, or invokes the " control's " interpretation of 
signs and fragmentary thoughts, we should have 
large measures of intromitted matter or at least forms 
of statement characteristic of the " control." 

There are interesting evidences of this modifying 
influence of the " control " on the messages trans- 
mitted to it. In general they represent forms of 
expression provably not characteristic of the discar- 
nate spirit from whom the messages purport to come, 
and present in the " communications " of the " con- 
trols " both when others are purporting to communi- 
cate and when they themselves are the sole " com- 
municators." That is, certain uniform modes of ex- 
pression are noticeable which are not characteristic of 
any particular " communicator " and so indicate the 



314. SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

modifying influence of the " control's " mind upon the 
message. One instance is the word " Messengers." 
This is the term which the Imperator group in the Pi- 
per case applies to themselves, as agents sent to prove 
the immortality of the soul. Now this word was sev- 
eral times put into the mouth of my father in his 
" communications," when it was wholly uncharacteris- 
tic of him. He knew nothing about this subject in 
general except what he got in a few conversations I 
had with him on it, and nothing whatever about this 
group of trance personalities in particular, nor did I 
at the time of our conversations. Here his allusion to 
them is clothed in their own language about them- 
selves. 

Again the word " Sunday " was twice put into the 
mouth of my father, when I suppose he never once 
used the word in his life. He always insisted on say- 
ing " Sabbath " instead and rebuked us children if 
he heard us use the word " Sunday," which I can 
assure you we rarely did under the discipline and 
habits of early life. It is important, too, to re- 
mark that the trance personalities themselves, those 
of the Imperator group proper, always employ the 
term " Sabbath " in their spontaneous " communi- 
cations," and use " Sunday " only when they are 
faithfully transmitting the messages of others. But 
on the occasions when the word " Sunday " was put 
into my father's mouth George Pelham was an inter- 
mediary between my father and Rector, the " con- 
trol " at the time, and George Pelham had prob- 
ably never used the word " Sabbath " in his life, as 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 315 

he was a resident of an eastern city where all re- 
ligious refinements about these terms were lost. 

A very striking instance of this modifying in- 
fluence is the adoption by the " controls " of the ab- 
breviation " U. D." for the word " understand," and 
the uniform practice of putting it into the mouths of 
various communicators, who cannot be supposed to use 
it at all. 

The trance personalities of the Imperator group 
often use the phrase " as I would have it," in their 
spontaneous " communications " and as often put 
it into the mouths of " communicators " who would 
not naturally use the expression, and who would be 
less imperious in their manners. It is the same with 
the term " light " by which they describe Mrs. Piper 
as a means of " communication." For instance, on 
one occasion in which my father wished to say that 
I could not communicate with him in certain experi- 
ments, he was made to say, speaking of the young 
men with whom I had been experimenting, " They 
are not light and I cannot reach you there." 

These are only a few instances of the phenomena 
which might be quoted, but they are decidedly evi- 
dential of the modifying influence which has been 
supposed or asserted, and they suffice to show its ex- 
istence. I have not the space to mention further 
proof, and it is not necessary here, as when once 
proved to exist to any extent at all, we can readily 
admit that it may have a larger influence than in 
the mere instances which prove its presence. The 
fact is that the reader of the detailed records will find 



316 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

an immense amount of evidence for its influence, and 
to these he must go if he is not satisfied with the evi- 
dence given. 

The important point to be observed as a conse- 
quence of proving this modifying influence of the 
" control " is the fact that it explains the general 
absence of the personal characteristics of the " com- 
municator " which sitters are so on the alert to dis- 
cover, and without which they hesitate to accept the 
spiritistic origin. This modifying influence does not 
explain the triviality of the messages, but it does 
explain the disappearance of the personal character- 
istics which are so often sought, and it indicates 
that the mode of communication on the " other side " 
involves its difficulties and may be compared to those 
of the telephone, though much more complicated and 
disturbing than any in the telephone. 

There are probably certain intercosmic obstacles 
intervening between the " communicator " and the 
" control " which cause confusion in the messages. 
We have no way, of course, to prove their existence, 
and it does not affect the case whether we can or 
not. The probability of them is based upon cer- 
tain features of the dramatic play of personality 
which represents the trance personalities as laboring 
under difficulties in getting the messages clearly, 
which they can deliver clearly usually when they get 
them. The interposition of George Pelham to get 
proper names illustrates the supposition, and occa- 
sional allusions to the process of " communicating," 
not apparent in my published report, indicate the 
same fact. But these obstacles need not be urged, 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 317 

as the utmost that can be implied by them is an in- 
crease of the difficulties in " communicating " and not 
merely the existence of them. But they explain cer- 
tain kinds of interruptions in the " communica- 
tions " and the occurrence of various confusions in 
them. 



3. Mental Condition of the " Communicator " 

I come now to the most important of all the ques- 
tions in favor of the spiritistic hypothesis after we 
have disqualified telepathy and satisfied ourselves with 
the evidence for personal identity. The existence 
of the supernormal and the satisfaction of the cri- 
terion for personal identity are the primary problems 
to be solved, and we should have to accept the spirit- 
istic hypothesis with any and all consequences what- 
ever, if the facts required it and if telepathy with 
its adjuncts were inadequate to effect a counter ex- 
planation. But we have the trivialities to explain 
also at any cost, and it is these that the supposi- 
tion of an abnormal mental condition of the " com- 
municator " is meant to explain. The crucial issue in 
the whole problem thus rests upon this question, in 
so far as it appeals to the personal interest of man- 
kind when called to recognise a future life as a fac- 
tor in the regulation of conduct or the cultivation 
of desire. We must give an intelligible answer to 
the scepticism based upon the persistent triviality of 
the messages as well as their fragmentary and con- 
fused character. The spiritistic hypothesis cannot 
shirk this responsibility in the least. 



318 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

It will be readily admitted that an abnormal mental 
condition of the " communicator," if it exists, would 
affect the messages very seriously, but the question 
of both the layman and the scientific man would be: 
" What evidence have you that this abnormal mental 
condition is a fact? " The answer to this question 
must be made clear and emphatic, and I think it can 
be made so clear that the supposition can be made 
to appear quite the most rational part of the general 
hypothesis. 

I am not prepared to define accurately the condi- 
tion of the " communicator " while sending messages, 
but it may be compared sometimes to certain types 
of secondary personality, sometimes to the hypnotic 
trance, and sometimes to delirium or dreaming. 
Whatever it is, the condition affects the current of 
thought and association, and the control of memory, 
so that amnesic tendencies are noticeable along with 
confusion and error in the " communications " and 
the limitation of the messages to trivialities, as we 
observe such conditions in normal life affecting them. 
We have only to be familiar with the abnormal 
mental phenomena of living persons to appreciate 
what would follow the existence of such mental states 
on the " other side." The only question for us, then, 
is the evidence that some abnormal condition prevails 
during the " communications," at least in most of the 
" communicators." 

The sceptic will ask, " How is any evidence possi- 
ble on such a matter ? " " How can we determine con- 
ditions on the 6 other side ' until we get there, if we 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 319 

ever do?" The answer to these questions is cumu- 
lative and I shall give the answers in that form. 

In the first place I may say that we can tell the 
abnormal mental condition of the discarnate " com- 
municator " in the same way that we can tell it in 
living persons with whom we communicate. The dif- 
ficulty with the sceptic is that he does not seem to 
be able to realize that the question of triviality in 
the messages does not arise until the spiritistic hy- 
pothesis is forced upon us to explain the supernor- 
mal facts in the records; and that we have then the 
same right to postulate the origin of the fragmen- 
tary and confused messages, as well as the persistence 
of triviality, in the discarnate spirits, and then ex- 
plain why they naturally take that form. Hence 
we simply suppose the mental condition of the " com- 
municator " from the very character of the messages. 
We tell when a man is insane, when he is delirious, 
when he is drunk, when his mind is not acting right- 
ly, by what we hear him say. We can tell when a 
writer is a crank or insane simply by what he says. 
The distortion of one's sentences, the disconnected re- 
lation of one's sentences, the fragmentary nature of 
one's conversations, the halting character of speech 
often in hypnosis, and various signs of the kind are 
unmistakable indications of abnormal mental condi- 
tions in the living, and the same characteristics ought 
to evidence the same facts in discarnate spirits. We 
might thus appeal to the persistent triviality of the 
incidents themselves for proof, were it not that it 
is this that excites sceptical curiosity. Confusion 



320 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

and error of a certain kind, simulative of dream-like 
and delirious consciousness in the living, will be un- 
mistakable evidence of it, when the force of triviality 
might be questioned. 

But there is a consideration that will certainly 
justify the supposition on the superficial character 
of the messages themselves. It is the fact that 
the spiritistic hypothesis rests primarily upon the 
supernormal incidents requiring an explanation, and 
that when the hypothesis is once assumed it must be 
made to include the non-evidential matter within its 
general application. It is not the intellectual char- 
acter or rationality of the messages that determines 
the necessity of supposing their origin in discarnate 
spirits, but it is the assumed impossibility of account- 
ing for them by chance, guessing, or by telepathy. 
They may be as irrational and insane in their form 
of presentation as you please, if only they show the 
activity of an intelligence independent of the me- 
dium's organism. In the study of the phenomena 
we simply select that part of the material purporting 
to come from spirits, which is evidential, and set aside 
the non-evidential matter as possibly due to second- 
ary personality or anything else. But once find that 
we are forced to explain the evidential matter by 
spirits and we are obliged either to explain the non- 
evidential matter by the same hypothesis or to show 
good reasons why the non-evidential matter is due to 
some other agency, and how the discrimination can be 
made. If the cleavage between the evidential and 
non-evidential matter is such that a difference of 
source is perfectly apparent, then there will be no 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 321 

reason for unifying our explanation. But readers 
of the Piper records will see very distinctly that 
there is no clear line of mental discrimination be- 
tween evidential and non-evidential matter, and hence 
we are required to extend the same hypothesis over 
the whole mass of phenomena, with only such ad- 
junctive hypotheses as are necessary to explain anom- 
alies perfectly consistent with the general theory but 
not naturally expected of normal conditions of con- 
sciousness. 

With this conception of the case in mind, with the 
necessity of first accepting the spiritistic theory at 
any cost of consequences, we can see very readily 
why the superficial character of the messages, as tes- 
timony to the condition of mind in which they origi- 
nate, may also be accepted, and this once done the 
reader has only to study the records to see the evi- 
dential cogency of that superficial character. But 
this cogency is of very different degrees in different 
cases. As I have remarked, the line of discrimina- 
tion between evidential and non-evidential matter 
bearing upon the supernormal cannot be drawn with 
absolute accuracy. Some messages are clear and 
true all the way through. Some are wholly false 
and worthless. Some are half true and half false. 
Some, while they are wholly false as they stand, are 
so near the truth in a few or many details as to leave 
the sitter without any doubt whatever as to what was 
meant, and these reflect with much force the mental 
conditions in which the messages originate. I shall 
select instances of this which will show a mixed evi- 
dential and non-evidential character, as they cannot 



322 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

be explained either by chance of any kind or by 
any accepted view of telepathy. They are, in fact, 
the strongest evidence of a spiritistic hypothesis as 
well as evidence of an abnormal mental condition in 
the " communicator " while sending messages. 

The first incident which I shall mention is the 
one in which my father and my uncle were involved 
about the drive and accident to the buggy (p. 233). 
I shall simply outline the facts briefly and without 
quoting the exact statements of the " communica- 
tors," as these are accessible to readers who wish to 
examine the facts in detail. 

My father mentions an accident which he indicates 
was associated with his sister. This sister denies that 
any such accident ever occurred in her experience. 
The accident is mentioned again by my father with 
new details, and these turn out to be false on inquiry. 
I ask a question of my uncle when he comes to " com- 
municate " and he thinks that I am referring to some 
other incident than the one that had occurred with 
him and myself the day after my father's death, and 
tells me of another drive; then he discovers we are 
" thinking of different things." 

When he inquires if I " mean on that Sunday " 
and on an affirmative reply from me he proceeds to 
tell accurately the main incidents of the breakdown 
after saying that my father had mentioned it before, 
but confused it in connecting it with my aunt, my 
father's sister and the uncle's wife. 

Now I had asked for incidents previous to my 
birth and which the two living aunts would know. 
But the response brought an incident which had oc- 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 323 

curred after my father's death and which ought to 
have been related to me and my uncle, deceased at the 
time of the message, and not to my father's sister. 
It was well calculated to prove my uncle's identity to 
this aunt, because he and I had tried to conceal the 
accident from her when we returned, and this was 
mentioned in the first reference by my father to the 
accident. But the incident had neither a bearing 
upon the personal identity of my father nor any rel- 
evancy to the request which I had made for incidents 
occurring before my birth. Then just before clear- 
ing up the matter my uncle indicates the confusion 
of my father, which the mistaken time relations in 
his statements and the misapplication of the reference 
for the facts clearly showed. When we see in the 
sequel what was meant the mental confusion is per- 
fectly apparent. 

Another incident shows this confusion very clearly. 
My father had referred to an illness which my sister 
had had three months before the sitting, he having 
died six years previously. But he could not continue 
what he wished to say, and later he returned with 
the help of my wife, who had died two years before ; 
calling her his wife — a statement corrected by her 
spontaneously the next day — he showed some con- 
fusion again about my sister, and Rector, the " con- 
trol " said (wrote) to me: " He seems a little dazed 
in thought. It is most certainly connected with Lida 
in the body." Then my father went on to mention 
a disease and physical difficulties that he claimed had 
been his own, the main one of which I knew to be false 
with regard to him. But inquiry showed that exami- 



324 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

nation had been made for this one in my sister's 
case and that the other two incidents were especially 
relevant to my sister, and were relevant to my father's 
condition just before death. The interesting circum- 
stance, however, is that Rector was aware of the ir- 
relevance of the facts as he was going to state them, 
and forewarned me as to their reference, while my 
father went on with a confused sense of personal iden- 
tity, claiming as his own what was in fact intended 
as true for my sister. 

My father made some statements about a fire 
which had given him a fright, and in alluding to it 
again and a third time showed that he had confused 
three different fire incidents in his life, any one of 
which would have been good evidence of identity. A 
story was told about a cherry tree which was quite 
relevant to a willow tree and not true about the 
cherry tree. The confusion about the canes is per- 
haps another illustration. I was asked by my father 
if I remembered a curved handled cane with his 
initials carved in the end. The " communicator " 
had no such cane. But he had had a straight gold- 
headed cane with his initials carved in the end, and 
it was soon afterward lost and a curved handled cane 
was given him in its stead, and certain incidents in 
his life associated them very closely together. 

There is a very fine evidential instance of the 
mental confusion in Dr. Hodgson's report on the 
Piper case. After the death of George Pelham a 
friend of the deceased by the name of Mr. Hart 
had some sittings with Mrs. Piper and was very much 
annoyed by the way in which the messages were 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 325 

spelled out in confusion, this process extending often 
to very ordinary words. Some time later Mr. Hart 
himself suddenly died and soon afterwards became a 
" communicator," but at first a very confused one. 
Dr. Hodgson had known him in life and was present 
at his sittings. One day this Mr. Hart turned up 
at one of Dr. Hodgson's sittings and engaged in the 
following " communications," whose significance is ap- 
parent at a glance. 

" What in the world is the reason you never call 
for me? I am not sleeping. I wish to help you in 
identifying myself. ... I am a good deal better 
now. (You were confused at first.) Very, but I 
did not really understand how confused I was. It 
is more so, I am more so when I try to speak to you. 
I understand now why George spelled his words to 
me." 

The strikingly evidential incident and allusion to 
his difficulty when living in understanding why there 
was confusion and the confession that he was now 
confused is an important indication of the phenom- 
enon which explains so much in the record. There 
is, of course, more than the mental confusion of the 
" communicator " involved in the explanation of the 
record, but this one circumstance suggests clearly 
the source of triviality. 

Quite as important a piece of evidence in this di- 
rection comes from this George Pelham. In explain- 
ing the conditions for " communicating " he once 
said, after having satisfied Dr. Hodgson of his iden- 
tity: 

" Remember, we share and always shall have our 



326 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

friends in the dream-life, i. e., your life, so to speak, 
which will attract us forever and ever, and so long as 
we have any friends sleeping in the material world; 
you to us are more like as we understand sleep, you 
look shut up as one in prison, and in order for us 
to get into communication with you, we have to enter 
into your sphere, as one like yourself asleep. . This 
is just why we make mistakes as you call them, or 
get confused and muddled, so to put it, Hodgson. 
(Dr. Hodgson repeats in his own language.) Your 
thoughts do grasp mine. Well, now you have just 
what I have been wanting to come and make clear to 
you, Hodgson, old fellow. (It is quite clear.) Yes, 
you see I am more awake than asleep, yet I cannot 
come just as I am in reality, independently of the 
medium's light." 

The reader will not only find this account of the 
matter entirely rational, whatever he may think of its 
truth, but he will also remark the reason for its ra- 
tionality, and this is the confessed clearer condition 
of this " communicator " who is clearer than we 
usually find others, as the records show. 

I shall take up some minor evidences of this same 
mental confusion and many of them will be found 
in my own records. On one occasion my father dis- 
covered his condition and the way that it might be 
viewed by me and broke out into the following mes- 
sage: " Ah, James, do not, my son, think I am de- 
generating because I am disturbed in thinking over 
my earthly life, but if you will wait for me I will 
remember all." Here is that borderland condition 
of consciousness in which we can sometimes detect 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 327 

ourselves when we are aware of delirium and cannot 
prevent it, but can introspect it enough to tell its na- 
ture. In another " communication " the same person 
said : " I am working to keep my thoughts clear," 
and soon afterward asked for an article with the 
statement : " It will help to keep my thoughts from 
rambling." In reference to something he could not 
recall he said : " Strange I cannot think of the 
word I want." Again he said : " I felt very much 
confused when I first came here." In another an 
interesting confession of amnesia dissociating the nor- 
mal life beyond from the condition for " communi- 
cating " occurs : " I seem to lose a part of my recol- 
lections between my absence and return." Again: 
" I intended to refer to Uncle John, but I was some- 
what dazed." 

Illustrations of this sort could be multiplied into 
the hundreds, and they all point to the same con- 
clusion and represent a consensus of opinion in va- 
rious " communicators." But there is one charac- 
teristic more of the " communications " which is an 
unconscious testimony to this delirious dream-like 
state of the " communicator." Their own definite 
statements are conscious and subject to discredit for 
various reasons, although if numerous enough and 
representative of a general law may be relieved of 
suspicion by that fact. But the characteristic which 
I wish to mark is not exposed to such an objection. 
It is the uniformly rapid movement of thought from 
incident to incident in the " communications." This 
is one of the most noticeable features of them and 
the rapidity and abruptness of change from idea 



328 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

to idea not naturally associated in life is a distinctive 
mark of what we know in delirium and dreams. I 
could give many and long illustrations of the phe- 
nomenon in the records. But I shall satisfy the 
reader with the mention of the fact, especially as it 
is unconscious attestation of the statements made in 
confession of the dream-like state when " communi- 
cating." Illustrations in proof of it would take up 
too much space and explanation. 

I have endeavored by these lengthy quotations to 
answer the question how we knew that there was any 
disturbed mental conditions associated with the mes- 
sages. In the nature of the case I could not make 
the supposition arbitrarily. I had to support it by 
evidence. The habit of paying no attention to the 
confusion, nonsense, and non-evidential matter pre- 
vents us from discovering the cause of it, and we nat- 
urally ask why the supposition is made when it is 
used to explain certain characteristics of the " com- 
munications. For these reasons I have given as much 
evidence as I can well quote in this book to show that 
the hypothesis is not arbitrary, but is one quite sub- 
stantiated by the facts. We are thus prepared to ex- 
amine what it explains. 

But I must remind the reader that the hypothesis 
of abnormal mental conditions as affecting the mes- 
sages is not a theory of my own concocting. It was 
first proposed by Dr. Hodgson, perhaps after being 
prompted to it by the statements to that effect by 
George Pelham and the unquestionable evidence of the 
" communications " themselves. I am only defending 
what another has suggested. It is not a novelty of 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 329 

my own at all. It was almost anticipated by Mr. 
Myers ; for he was aware that some of the " communi- 
cations " looked so inane as to be intelligible only on 
the supposition of some abnormal condition, whether 
terrestrial or transcendental. But there has not been 
the opportunity on the part of Dr. Hodgson to ex- 
press fully his conception of the case or to present 
adequate proof of it. It is, however, so crucial to 
the spiritistic hypothesis that it must receive as much 
attestation as it is possible to give it in a brief work 
like this. 

Assuming, then, that the hypothesis has sufficient 
evidence to justify its application we may next ask 
what it explains. What does this dream-like condi- 
tion, or delirious half consciousness explain? The 
first answer to the question and the one intended from 
the very conception of the perplexity felt by most 
people is that it adequately, explains the triviality of 
the messages. We are familiar enough with the inci- 
dents of dreams to appreciate this assertion, and de- 
lirium exhibits still more analogies in the type of in- 
cidents that constitute the stream of its reproductions. 
Both conditions show the mind in a more or less auto- 
matic state and incapable of controlling the drift of 
association and memory, as it is done by attention 
in normal consciousness ; and this feature of the phe- 
nomena is noticeable in the " communications," and 
with the stress and strain of attention withdrawn the 
events of memory will naturally flow on and up in 
miscellaneous confusion and also represent the most 
trivial recollections of life. When we consider that 
the " communicator " in his normal state on the other 



330 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

side is aware of his problem and would, in his rational 
condition, select trivial facts to prove his identity ; and 
that the condition for " communicating " interrupts 
this rational state with more or less amnesia and yet 
enough of automatic memory retained often to take 
up the incidents, we can understand both the triviality 
of the facts and the confusion attending the attempt 
to tell them in the abnormal state. Then the ab- 
normal state once assumed tends to keep the mind on 
the less interesting episodes of one's life and bring on 
something like delirium. Secondary personality in its 
undeveloped forms often imitates this same phenom- 
enon in respect to confusion and triviality, but does 
not involve anything supernormal. Some hypnotic 
states exhibit the same phenomenon. The triviality 
of its incidents is the striking fact, and is apparently 
the rule in most abnormal personalities or mental 
states, especially where this state is non-systematic. 

But more than triviality is explained by the mental 
confusion of the " communicator." Certain other 
features of the messages are probably due to it. But 
as obstacles within the organism of the medium and 
intercosmic difficulties may intervene to pervert mes- 
sages on the way to the " controls " it is possible that 
we cannot determine very accurately what confusions 
are due to the mental condition of the " communi- 
cator " and what to other obstacles. There is evi- 
dence in some instances, notably in false messages, 
that the mental action of the " communicator " is 
clear enough, but is without the power to compare its 
contents with the facts to assure itself of correctness. 
The confusion here is one of error and represents what 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 331 

we find in systematic dreaming. But it is not neces- 
sary to distinguish the confusion due to the various 
causes, as so much of it is the result of the dream- 
like state of the " communicator " under the impelling 
force of association and rapid delirious thinking; 
we may rest satisfied with the one general removal of 
the primary difficulty of the spiritistic theory, as it 
has appeared to most persons interested in the phe- 
nomena. 

Readers of the records will observe that not all 
" communicators " are equally affected by the condi- 
tions influencing messages. Some are clearer than 
others, and some are clearer at one time than at an- 
other. The condition, like many abnormal mental 
conditions in the living, is a fluctuating one and the 
results vary with it. Some of the " communications " 
by my father were clearly related to the deepest inter- 
est of his life and showed a clearly changed point of 
view. His religious beliefs were what every one in the 
present day would call very narrow. He would not 
have denied this, though he would have insisted that 
they were true, whatever other characteristic they had. 
But in some very far reaching intimations he indicated 
a change of view that touched upon the vital questions 
of both his family and his religious life. But most 
that he " communicated " was the consequence of an 
explanation that little incidents were desirable for the 
proof of his identity, and he rationally clung to that 
policy with its inevitable accompaniment of triviality. 
Almost as soon as he came to " communicate " he 
began most naturally to refer to our conversations on 
this subject before his death, an incident not at all 



332 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

trivial when it is considered in relation to the modi- 
fication of his view of things necessitated by a wider 
outlook into cosmic law and evolution. But the mo- 
ment that it was intimated that little incidents were 
necessary to prove his identity and to establish the 
conclusion involved in this investigation, the mind of 
the " communicator " thenceforth concentrated most 
naturally on the trivial incidents that would effect 
the object and has ever since stood by this conception 
with a firm persistence. He has not always been able 
to maintain a clear state of mind for his purpose, but 
it shows the effect of a rational understanding and 
will in the work, a position that probably reflects the 
normal consciousness on the " other side " imperfectly 
carried over into the abnormal condition necessary to 
" communicate." For there is apparently a good deal 
of evidence that more or less amnesia of both the nor- 
mal life beyond and of past earthly life arises from 
the condition necessary to " communicate," though it 
is only the amnesia of our natural dream life. Let 
me indulge a speculative analogy for a moment. 

In the experiments to prove telepathy it was no- 
ticeable that the agent had to think as intently as 
possible, and apparently in many cases the mental 
abstraction necessary to effect the transmission had to 
amount almost to the extent of visualisation. The 
percipient in many cases received the impression in 
the form of an hallucination. This was specially ob- 
servable in the only successes that I ever obtained in 
telepathic transmission. Now add to this the fact 
that in our dreams we perceive things as if they were 
real. We seem to see actual things, to hear actual 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 333 

sounds, to touch actual objects. The process is really 
one of hallucination, and not imagination as we know 
it in our normal state. Those who awaken in a dream 
realise this very distinctly, and hypnogogic illusions 
represent the same phenomenon. The mind acts from 
central processes as if it was responding to peripheral 
stimuli and the dream world has all the reality of the 
real world but its persistence and probability. 

Now suppose the mode of " communication " with 
the discarnate is telepathic or involves telepathic proc- 
esses; that intensity of mental action which is neces- 
sary to impress a delicate mechanism with the mes- 
sage to be sent may involve something like the mental 
action that creates the sensory imagery of dreams, 
the suppression of external stimuli and the releasing 
of central agencies. If this be true we can under- 
stand why a state like our sleep should be necessary 
to effect certain kind of " communication." 

I do not pretend that this conjecture is either prov- 
able or a complete explanation of the phenomena if it 
were provable. All that I contend for is that it is 
possible and that the indulgence of it in the light of 
known facts of normal experience helps us to under- 
stand the characteristic of the alleged communications 
through Mrs. Piper, and to modify their apparently 
anomalous character. 

The clear " communications " on the nature of the 
life beyond by George Pelham, in so far as analogies 
can be " clear," illustrate again that some " communi- 
cators " may possess a better balanced consciousness 
and when they do the messages betray less triviality 
of incident. I cannot detail any of his " revelations," 



334 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

as they are outside the evidential problem which must 
be the first one to solve, and I allude to them only 
to refute the accusation that all the material is trivial, 
while admitting that most of it is such and ought to be 
such in a scientific question of this kind. 

I shall simply remark a fact that is incompatible 
with the telepathic hypothesis and that is probably 
connected with the abnormal mental conditions neces- 
sary for " communication." It is the fact that " com- 
municators " gradually lose the power of " communi- 
cating " incidents of terrestrial experience as time 
elapses, and can only engage in non-evidential " com- 
munications " though retaining certain personal 
characteristics of identity. This is quite a natural 
phenomenon for anyone who has observed human de- 
velopment in this life. The past vanishes in propor- 
tion to its inutility in our growth. The adult wholly 
forgets his childhood, and the child at a certain stage 
forgets the events of infancy, as its personality 
changes. A crisis in our lives may involve such an 
alteration of interests as to reduce to more or less 
complete amnesia the incidents important to a previous 
system of habits and interests. Now, after death, as- 
suming that we continue to exist, we have no need of 
our past sensory experience except as an accident of 
the retention of our personal identity, and as soon 
as this has been established by new experiences in a 
transcendental environment, whether we call this ethe- 
real or spiritual, we may allow sensory memories to 
atrophy and to be irrevocable, at least with that in- 
tensity and in that form that may be necessary to 
make them communicable with a physical world. I do 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 335 

not say or imply that the past is not clearly recallable 
in the normal state beyond, but that as time elapses 
it seems that it cannot be recalled for " communica- 
tion." We can well understand, therefore, why its 
recall involves a dream-like and delirious stream of 
trivial incidents which usually characterise the auto- 
matic action of our own minds when the stress of at- 
tention is removed and the current of thought has its 
own spontaneous course. 

Let me carry this analogy a little farther and apply 
it all along the line of our evolution, beginning with 
infancy and illustrating the possible course of devel- 
opment that may make survival after death a reason- 
able contingency and communication with the discar- 
nate an equal contingency. The prenatal existence 
of the infant is dependent upon the possession of two 
bodies, its mother's and its own. Its nutrition comes 
to it from an external source already digested and 
prepared for assimilation, and its circulation, the 
agency transmitting this nutrition, also comes from 
without. Its organic actions are not its own spon- 
taneous functions, but the contribution of its environ- 
ment, its mother's organism. But it possesses a latent 
system of senses and organs which have no relation 
to this environment and whose activities would proba- 
bly not represent this environment rightly if they 
occurred. Vision and hearing in this prenatal state, 
if possible, would not represent much of that world 
and touch may be as inactive as the other senses most 
naturally are. But they are functions unadapted to 
the prenatal environment, and waiting for use in an- 
other world after birth. This birth is only a depart- 



SS6 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ure from its mother's organism and its awakening in 
a different physical world in which its new activities 
are elicited. For its normal life through childhood 
to maturity these activities constitute its natural and 
adapted functions until death. But there are latent 
functions which we have to call subconscious, and 
which in secondary personality of certain forms rep- 
resent no useful character in the struggle for exist- 
ence. They are not necessary for survival in the 
present physical world and show as much inadaptation 
as the normal senses before birth. They are possible 
latent functions awaiting the stimulus of another en- 
vironment, functions capable of reacting to a spiritual 
or mental stimulus and of occasionally acting on the 
physical organism, indirectly at least through its 
automatic machinery, when the control or influence 
of the normal consciousness is relaxed or withdrawn. 
Now if death is merely a departure of the soul from its 
own body, as birth is a departure from the mother's 
body, it may simply release for functional activity 
agencies that were latent in its physical existence and 
the functions related to the physical world may gradu- 
ally atrophy from disuse and inadaptation to a new 
environment. The subliminal functions of the phys- 
ical world may become the supraliminal of the ethereal 
and spiritual world. The resuscitation of earthly 
memories and their transmission to the physical world 
may require that co-operation of subliminal functions 
which betrayed themselves in dreams and hallucinations 
in normal life, and consequently the recurrence of ab- 
normal mental conditions beyond to effect the result. 
The natural inadaptation of these perfectly to either 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 337 

world may necessarily involve the production of 
dream-like trivialities and confusion. 

I have no evidence that any such possibilities are a 
fact and hence I do not pretend that they represent 
even a plausible theory. They only accord with the 
analogies of known experience in normal life, and 
may be proposed for what they are worth, not as a 
serious hypothesis of fact. They simply indicate the 
possible reason why the confusion and trivialities of 
communications may partake of the abnormal condi- 
tions that perhaps necessarily accompany the process 
by which nature tries to bridge the chasm between 
two different worlds while it carries personal identity 
over from one to the other. Nature has to observe 
the law of continuity in some form, and if it cannot 
do it any other way it will adopt temporary functions 
in an organism for the purpose. Subliminal mental 
functions may serve this purpose and connect the 
physical and spiritual worlds in this way without 
making them too close to each other in reality. 

The current and Kanto-Hegelian idealism cannot 
object to any such view of the case as can be shown 
by the place which is assigned to internal activities or 
functions of the mind. Idealism represents the mean- 
ing of things from the point of view of consciousness 
as distinguished from the physical world or external 
stimuli. It emphasises inner activity and in some 
cases goes so far as to describe the process as one of 
" creating our own world." Whatever place external 
stimulus may have, it is certain that the functions of 
consciousness are not always representative of the 
reality which gives rise to them. " Sound " seems to 



338 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

have no resemblance to the vibrations which occasion 
it. The sensations of color seem to have no resem- 
blance to the undulations of light supposed to cause 
them. Hence the reactions of the mind upon things 
from without seem wholly unlike the phenomena of the 
transmission of motion in the mechanical world and 
so to characterise a world of creation. Determinative 
action from within begins in conscious organisms, and 
if there is anything in the survival of this conscious- 
ness it may represent a process of evolution toward the 
perpetuity of this creative action. The infant is 
purely passive in its prenatal existence. It requires 
no conscious struggle, and obtains nutrition and pro- 
tection from without. But when it becomes conscious 
on birth it assumes a life in which it starts toward a 
career of creation and construction. It is still related 
to a physical world in which its consciousness re- 
quires a stimulus to initiate its constructive activity. 
The growth of all the higher intellectual activities 
represents a growth in this creative or constructive 
agency. Scientific, philosophic, and poetic creations 
are the play of these higher functions on the appar- 
ently disordered material of sensory experience and 
are a discipline in the exercise of this sort of function 
which may be of continued service as function in an- 
other mode of existence. But they give no apparent 
reality apart from the presence of an external stimu- 
lus. In our subliminal activities, however, as in 
dreams and hallucinations, this apparent reality is 
present. We actually create our apparent physical 
universe in them and the stimulation of normal sense 
activity is complete. What if these subliminal func- 



CONDITIONS OF COMMUNICATING 339 

tions are only foresights of spontaneous activities in 
a new environment, creating their world there, while 
other functions are receptive of impression from it, 
and carrying along with them the best or the worst 
of our sensory life in the physical world. Why could 
not a rationalised dream life, such as poetry actually 
is, represent a true spiritual life, or at least the means 
of bridging the chasm between a material and a spirit- 
ual world and opening the way to a larger life of 
creative activity than the physical world will permit, 
a creative activity that may be wholly spiritual? 

I am not advancing any such possibility as true in 
fact, but only as a natural expectation on the basis 
of idealism on the one hand and the proof of a future 
life on the other. All that I am contending for is 
that idealism is deprived of objections to such a con- 
ception of things, as it apparently conforms to evo- 
lution as we observe it from the earliest stages of 
organic existence to its close ; in which apparently we 
have a progress from the purely passive toward the 
purely active life in which consciousness and its 
development toward creative activity for making the 
source of its enjoyments is apparently the law of the 
cosmos. But such a speculation is not necessary to 
the proof of a future life. Its indulgence can only 
serve to throw light upon those intermediate mental 
conditions which do not seem to represent a perfect 
adaptation to either mode of existence, and so to be 
abnormal to both while all the higher functions are 
reserved for their proper action in their appropriate 
place. The creative functions as we know them serve 
for progress in the present life ; and their continuance 



340 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

in the next will only be their exaltation in an environ- 
ment better adapted to them while the latent func- 
tions of the present, receiving their stimulus from the 
active functions of sense and intellect, may carry over 
into the new ethereal world the capacity to make 
ideals real in the same sense in which dreams and 
hallucinations create reality, and will not require 
adaptation to that reality for survival as in the pres- 
ent. In the intermediate stages we may have the 
abnormal and unadapted of both worlds. Confusion 
and triviality would thus be a natural and perhaps 
a necessary accompaniment of communication between 
them. 

That this view is possible is supported even by Dr. 
Osier. Immediately following the passage in his In- 
gersoll Lecture on immortality, which I have quoted 
above, he adds : " There is much to suggest, and it is 
a pleasing fancy, that outside our consciousness lie 
fields of psychical activity analogous to the invisible 
yet powerful rays of the spectrum. The thousand 
activities of the bodily machine, some of them noisy 
enough at times, do not in health obtrude themselves 
upon our consciousness, and just as there is this enor- 
mous subconscious field of vegetative life, so there 
may be a vast supraconscious sphere of astral life, the 
manifestations of which are only now and then in 
evidence." 



CHAPTER XIII 

ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 

In the scientific discussion of a future life a man 
can make no promises. He must adjudge the whole 
question by the evidence and must abide by the ver- 
dict. He must accept the disproof of it, if that be 
presented, as calmly as he pretends to accept its proof. 
He must have no personal preferences one way or the 
other, if he claims to decide the question by scientific 
criteria. Science is disinterested and accepts the truth 
whether it hurts or heals. Philosophy and poetry 
may indulge their empyrean flights, the one of reason 
and the other of imagination, and religion may utter 
its passionate cry for a happy meeting in the Elysian 
fields, but science with its stern unbending will, even 
if it has to leave Hecuba mourning for her children, 
must weigh the truth in the scales of justice without 
a tear and without any wincing at the bitterness of 
fate. 

The intelligent public's state of mind on this ques- 
tion in the present age is one of comparative indif- 
ference. There are several reasons for this connected 
with the whole development of the relation between 
science and religion and the development of economic 
industries. They are worth a brief notice as they 
partly excuse this indifference and partly condemn it. 

The Greeks before the rise of philosophic scepticism 
and of intellectual culture accepted the immortality 

341 



342 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of the soul, though there is evidence that it not only 
exercised little influence on moral and social life, but 
also that their conception of it seems to have been 
drawn from phenomena resembling mediumistic com- 
munications. These represented it as a meager and 
undesirable mode of existence. When scepticism and 
culture arose they drove away the gods and the belief 
in immortality. Thenceforth the Greeks lived for 
science and art. They were by nature passionate 
worshippers of the beauties of nature, and having 
come to the conviction that another life after death 
involved an existence inferior to the present they gave 
themselves up to the delirium of terrestrial pleasures, 
the " carnal life of sense," and not having the brother- 
hood of man to steady their social and political life 
ended in the debaucheries of Epicureanism. There 
were redeeming features in their civilisation which I 
shall not discuss here, as I am emphasising only the 
influences that center about the idea of a future life, 
and the denial of it. Some of the best minds of 
Greece believed it, though not in a personal immortal- 
ity as usually understood. But it had a very slight 
hold on either individual or social morality and was 
never associated with any clear ideas on the brother- 
hood of man. Aristocratic and imperialistic concep- 
tions of society were too prevalent for anything like 
equality to secure respect. Philosophy, when not 
grossly materialistic, was an impersonal pantheism, 
and all social and political ideals were conceived in 
harmony with it. 

When Christianity came it was a revolt against both 
the philosophy and the politics of Greece. Its phi- 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 343 

losophy was theistic and its politics were democratic. 
It asserted the created nature of the material world 
and placed an infinite spirit behind the phenomenal 
world, and in man it placed a finite spirit which sur- 
vived death, and associated this belief with a morality 
that involved the brotherhood of man. But in this re- 
volt, like all reactions, Christianity laid such stress 
upon a future life and upon an ascetic morality for 
the present existence that its whole history has been 
infected with an unnatural disease. It even forgot 
the brotherhood of man with which it started and 
concentrated all its interest in the life beyond the 
grave, and subordinated all its social, moral, ecclesias- 
tical, and political machinery to the end of personal 
salvation in another world. The importance of this 
was intensified by its doctrine of rewards and punish- 
ments and the denial of probation after death, the last 
being modified by the Catholic doctrine of purgatory. 
But its theory of rewards and punishments gave a 
perfunctory character to secular and social virtues, 
while the supremacy of the interest in the discarnate 
life led to the neglect of the most important duties in 
the present. The selfish instincts of ancient individ- 
ual life became an absorbing and passionate personal 
interest in individual salvation; and the social life 
of the community, whose regeneration it started to 
effect by the moral reformation of the individual, 
was abandoned for personal happiness beyond the 
grave. To purchase this the earthly life had to 
be made ascetic and external social duties were 
the price of this trans-mortal salvation. The out- 
come of this movement was the social, political, and 



344* SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

moral orgies of the middle ages when every principle 
of Christianity was sacrificed to persecution, bad gov- 
ernment, hypocrisy, superstition, barbarism, and such 
debaucheries as a low economic development would 
permit. Among the lower strata of society the orig- 
inal conceptions prevailed sufficiently to preserve the 
social system; but for this the anarchy of Greco- 
Roman civilisation at its end would have repeated his- 
tory. But it maintained itself in poverty, ignorance, 
and superstition, while the intellectuals played the 
game of tyranny and hypocrisy. 

The Renaissance put an end to this. It released 
from bondage the three most potent forces in modern 
civilisation, political liberty, industrial development, 
and scientific method. They only slowly followed the 
reformation, but their efficiency was sure and irre- 
sistible. They revived culture after ancient models 
while they preserved some of the humanitarian enthu- 
siasm which had been the teaching but not the prac- 
tice of so many centuries. The consequence has been 
the application of morals to the improvement of the 
present life. The movement was accompanied by the 
growth of scepticism and materialism, which have 
permeated all the strata of cultivated and intellectual 
society. The whole theistic system and its belief in a 
future life was slowly sapped by it, and as all the 
ideals of the mediaeval period, including its view of 
immortality and personal salvation, were the property 
of the less cultivated, the natural distinctions which 
arise from the differences of culture and their aristo- 
cratic associations have implicated an indifference to 
the question of a personal survival after death with 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 345 

the marks of intelligence and unselfishness. After a 
passionate longing for a future life the human race, 
brought by materialism to think that it is not possible, 
consoles itself with the fable of the fox and the grapes 
and prides itself in a stoical philosophy, forgetting 
that such an attitude is a confession of the ideality of 
that which it has to scorn and to abandon. The per- 
sonal interest in immortality had become so neglectful 
of the social duties of the present and the necessity 
of making peace with the inevitable so imperative, that 
the intelligent man had to make a virtue of this 
necessity, and however much he may have liked to 
retain his hopes he accepts his fate and will not bewail 
his loss, though he affects a stoical virtue in his pro- 
fession of indifference. " Thus," says John Fiske, 
" there has grown up a kind of Puritanism in the 
scientific temper which, while announcing its unalter- 
able purpose to follow Truth though she lead us to 
Hades, takes a kind of grim satisfaction in emphasiz- 
ing the place of destination." 

This temper, of course, has its healthy implications, 
as it is the Nemesis of that faith which neglected its 
present social duties for an imaginary and unattested 
world where, if it were rational, virtue would count for 
nothing unless it had been properly performed in this. 
Secularism is the rationalist's protest against an ab- 
surd " other worldliness ; " and it seems forced by the 
very law of human progress to gain its own end by a 
neglect of the spiritual, similar to that which charac- 
terised the religious mind's attitude toward the earth- 
ly. But there is no reason, save the lack of intelli- 
gence and high moral development, why both tenden- 



346 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

cies should not act together. There is no reason why 
a belief in a future life should be a necessary evil and 
there is no reason why a reference to present duties 
alone should be the world's only virtue. Both ought 
to be articulated in the highest character, if there is 
any reason to accept a future life at all. Of course, 
a reference to a future life in our daily conduct will 
get its rationality from the conviction that it is a fact, 
while ignorance of such a destiny is certainly an ex- 
cuse for the neglect of it. No duties can have any 
force or motive power if they are based upon a mere 
possibility of another life when they are confronted 
with an equal possibility that it is not a fact. Moral- 
ity to be effective must have some certainties in the 
causal series of events or it will be largely inopera- 
tive. Hence if we are to use a future life as a motive 
power in conduct at all we must assure ourselves that 
it is a fact and that it represents some degree of 
progress as the result of effort in the present life. 

In spite of all the evils that have been associated 
with the abuses of Christian thought the belief in 
immortality has had an important influence and it is 
worth remarking. In a discussion elsewhere of an- 
cient political institutions and their sacrifice of the 
individual, I said : " Christianity created a revolution 
in this respect. It was a direct assault upon ancient 
morality and an indirect assault upon its politics. 
This was effected by changing the content and the 
direction, but not the point of view of the individual- 
ism that regulated ancient private life. I have said 
that ancient morality was confined to civic ends. But 
private conduct was under the dominion of personal 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 347 

interest, and this was materialistic, being sensuous 
satisfaction and wealth based upon slavery. Christian 
civilisation was spiritualistic and its individualism was 
not only concentrated upon immaterial ideas, but also 
required the sacrifice of the present to the future and 
the subordination of self to the welfare of others. 
This change in content and direction of conduct was 
accomplished by its doctrine of the immortality of the 
soul. Usually this belief is assumed to represent a 
purely religious conception with no political impor- 
tance whatever. But it was in fact the profoundest 
political force in history, and with its associated social 
and moral conceptions was both a revolutionising and 
a regenerating influence for higher civilisation. The 
more we examine into the nature of this doctrine, the 
motives to which it appealed, the moral equality which 
it proclaimed even between master and slave, the 
promises and hopes which it held out to the poor, its 
contempt for riches and abandonment of ancient po- 
litical ideals and ends, the more we must recognise the 
natural antagonism which it aroused in pagan Rome 
with the prevailing devotion to the secular and military 
ideal. Patriotism and the virtues of soldiers and citi- 
zens directed only toward material happiness and na- 
tional glory were not likely to characterise men whose 
aspirations were occupied with a spiritual world be- 
yond the grave. Hence antiquity showed a perfectly 
natural and logical instinct when it endeavored by all 
the means in its power to crush the new society ; for its 
conception of the brotherhood of man, of human 
rights, its indifference to politics, and the firmness and 
austerity of its conscience were moral forces that 



348 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

sounded the death-knell of a civilisation which was 
based upon mere power. 

" The revolutionary influence which was exerted by 
the doctrine of immortality was caused by the value 
•which it put upon the individual. In Greek thought 
all moral values were placed in abstract institutions. 
The only approach to spiritual ideals that Greco-Ro- 
man civilisation produced was found in the welfare of 
the state and the sacrifice of individual life and con- 
duct to it. But Christianity put this value in the 
concrete individual for whom institutions existed, and 
not he for institutions. The new movement withdrew 
from politics at the outset, seeking the ' kingdom of 
God,' partly in the voluntary association of its votaries 
and partly in the purification and hopes of the soul. 
The mental and moral attitude of ancient thought, 
which had subordinated the individual to the whole 
was here completely reversed, and man was conceived 
as a being to whose interests and perfection both na- 
ture and government were to be contributory. In this 
conception of the world and man all rights and values 
belonged to the individual, and not to political and 
physical powers above him. Thus a new center of 
interest, social and moral, arose, making the subject 
and not the sovereign the ultimate reference of con- 
duct. Hence it is no wonder that Christianity was so 
violently attacked by Paganism. This inversion of 
the ancient political ideal, the substitution of the 
spiritual kingdom of God for the material splendor 
of civic grandeur, and the installation of the rights 
of the individual against the absolute rights of the 
sovereign were revolutionary forces of incomparable 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 349 

magnitude, and made modern democracy inevitable. 
Imperialism and its military ideals were impossible 
where citizens sought peace on earth, good will toward 
men, and supernal bliss in a transcendental world after 
death." 

That this view of its importance is not without good 
authority is apparent in what historians admit. 
Every one knows what Gibbon says of its function in 
the conquest of the world by Christianity. He re- 
garded it as one of the five causes that accounted for 
its complete triumph over paganism. But Mr. Gold- 
win Smith recently proclaimed himself quite em- 
phatically on the social and ethical value of the 
belief in immortality. After defending the agnos- 
tic's position of doubt or disbelief, and showing that 
religion and philosophy have totally failed to sub- 
stantiate the belief with convincing evidence, he goes 
on with clear moral insight and something of despair 
to admit frankly the importance of the belief for civil- 
isation : 

" The Founder of Christendom taught the universal 
fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of 
man. On what does the universal brotherhood of man 
rest, if not on the universal fatherhood of God? Is 
there among all the different tribes of man any bond 
of unity, or even of common origin, so assured as to 
constitute a fraternal relation? Certain it is that a 
failure of practical belief in the fatherhood of God 
has been accompanied by a burst of disregard, even 
of contempt, for the brotherhood of man. Jingoism, 
which seems everywhere to be spreading, is in open 
defiance of humanity. It tramples under foot, in 



350 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

its thirst of expansion, the restraints of the Christian 
code. It is accompanied and partly fed by a thirst 
of gain, turning the commercial world into a battle- 
field, which had hitherto been in some measure bal- 
anced and repressed by spiritual interests and aspira- 
tions. 

" Take away the religious conscience, and what re- 
mains? Enough remains, no doubt, to hold society 
together. There will still be the rules which the com- 
munity makes for self-preservation and embodies in 
municipal law. There will still be the policeman and 
the judge. There will still be social influences and 
restrictions of all kinds, which may hereafter take the 
more definite and impressive form of Social Science. 
Besides these, there will be affection, conjugal, paren- 
tal, and general. There will be friendship; there 
will be the need and desire of the good opinion of 
fellowmen. In the character and minds of men of 
the higher class there will be general benevolence and 
love of their kind. But what will there be to restrain 
evil natures, such as will probably continue to exist, 
from gratifying their propensities, if they can evade 
or overcome human law during their lives and there 
is nothing to fear beyond — if at the end of life there 
is to be no difference between the condition of the best 
man and that of the worst ? That is a question which 
not only may present itself, but perhaps is presenting 
itself, though in forms less antisocial than that here 
supposed, to men who have cast off belief in future 
retribution. Social science may be able to fill the 
void left by religion. If it is, let it do this with all 
speed. 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 351 

" A general contraction of views to the man's own 
life must apparently be the consequence of the con- 
viction that this life is all. A man of sense will 
probably be inclined to let reforms alone, and to con- 
sider how he may best go through the brief journey 
of life with comfort, if possible with enjoyment to 
himself, and in pleasant intercourse with his fellow- 
men. High social or political aspirations of any 
kind, will hardly survive the disillusion. 

" We have an interest in our own children. But 
otherwise what interest have we in the generations 
that are to come after us on which a religion of 
Humanity can be founded? It is not a very lively in- 
terest that we feel even in the remoter members of 
the human race, to say nothing of those in the next 
street. Yet these exist ; and of their existence we are 
conscious, and are reminded by the electric cable. Of 
the existence of future generations, supposing there 
is no future life, we shall not be conscious, and there- 
fore for us they will not exist. We cannot even say 
with absolute certainty that they will exist at all. 
The end of man's dwelling-place and therefore of all 
human progress, science tells us, will be a physical 
catastrophe; and there are even those who seem to 
think that this catastrophe may be forestalled by a 
recurrence of the glacial era. Natural law, which 
science bids us venerate, departs, it must be remem- 
bered, with the Lawgiver. Nothing remains but phys- 
ical forces without a guiding mind, the play of which 
it is impossible to forecast. As to posthumous fame, 
it would be an arrant delusion, even if one man in a 
million could hope to obtain it. 



352 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

" Whatever conduces to the enjoyment and pro- 
longation of this life will probably be sought more 
energetically than before. Material progress, there- 
fore, may quicken its pace. Nor is it likely that men 
will be quite so ready as they are now to throw away 
their lives in war. At present the soldier in facing 
death is probably sustained by a notion, however dim 
and vague, of a reward for the performance of his 
duty. 

" It can hardly be doubted that hope of compensa- 
tion in a future state, for a short measure of happi- 
ness here, though it may have been somewhat dim, 
has materially helped to reconcile the less favored 
members of the community to the inequalities of the 
existing order of things. The vanishing of that hope 
can scarcely fail to be followed in the future by an 
increased impatience of inequality, and a growing 
determination not to be put off the indemnity to 
another world. In fact, this is already visible in 
the spirit and language of labor agitation. Serious 
problems of this kind seem to await the coming gener- 
ation." 

I do not think " Social Science " can supply the 
lack of religion. No science can produce the motives 
that regulate human action. It can only reinforce 
or justify them by establishing the truths on which 
those motives feed. The great forces of civilisation 
are certain ineradicable instincts, and the desire for 
survival is one of them in the properly social and 
moral man. It is not noticeable in the man who 
has no real social impulses of the high moral order. 
It is the " religion of sorrow," the passionate pity for 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 353 

pain where it seems undeserved, the altruistic sym- 
pathy for the weak and helpless, that feels most the 
need of a continued existence after death to balance 
the inequalities of the present, though such natures 
do not themselves feel the personal need of it. But no 
science will create this demand for it as the one con- 
dition for considering the world morally rational. 
Science can only prove or disprove the legitimacy of 
hope and desire, while those primary instincts will do 
their work with or without science, unless we have first 
resolved that no instincts shall have any play in life 
until they have obtained the permission of science." 

It is probable that the motives that actuate the 
soldier may be underestimated in the passage quoted, 
as there are races whose soldierly qualities do not de- 
pend upon any belief in a future life. But where 
this does not operate as a stimulus to bravery its 
place is taken by the influence of public opinion 
against the coward. This can be made quite as ef- 
fective as a deterrent as a future life can be made a 
stimulant. But the community in making this de- 
mand on the individual can be no less selfish in it than 
the man who acts from a personal interest in immor- 
tality. But the belief in a future life may effect 
all that is accomplished by a social and public opin- 
ion and at the same time do much more by satisfying 
the law of desert in human conduct, namely, that the 
individual who performs the duty shall have the 
consequences of it. 

But it is the relation of the belief to the social 
question that is its greatest importance, and here Mr. 
Goldwin Smith has touched the key to the future of 



354s SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

politics. The ideals of democracy will live or die with 
the belief in immortality. Christianity boasted of its 
freight of hope to the poor and of its placing men 
on an equality before the world. It taught us that 
man shall not live by bread alone, and that riches 
were not the pathway into the kingdom of God. It 
was Lazarus and not the rich man that found happi- 
ness in the next world, and I believe it was Dean 
Swift who said that God shows what estimate he 
places on money by the kind of men to whom he gives 
it. Wealth brings what is called refinement and cul- 
ture based upon the exploitation of the unfavored 
classes; but the milk of human kindness is not so 
warm and healthy as in the spontaneous helpfulness 
of the poor. It makes a virtue of charity, but this 
is quite as often a sop thrown to Cerberus to prevent 
him from swallowing us, as it is a wise philanthropy. 
It is all very well for the rich and cultured to tell 
us we should have no personal interest in a future 
life and thus appear to be very disinterested in their 
views of life, when the fact is that this is only a 
subterfuge to escape the duty to share with labor and 
suffering the fruits of a selfish exploitation of them. 
The truth is that men never became stoical and pre- 
tentiously virtuous about immortality until they be- 
came convinced that it was not to be had; and then 
to placate the poor they begin teaching them the 
duty of sacrifice in this respect while they make none 
themselves in the field of wealth until they have satis- 
fied all their Epicurean desires. But they will learn 
in the dangers of a social revolution that the poor will 
not sacrifice both wealth and immortality. These will 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 355 

insist on sharing one or the other. They were prom- 
ised immortality by Christianity and they were told at 
the same time that all men were brothers and that 
society should be constructed on the basis of this 
moral relationship. The church has succeeded in 
allying itself with riches and abandoned the brother- 
hood which was the raison d'etre of its existence; 
scepticism, in which the church is fast coming to 
share, has robbed them of hope; and they are not 
likely to contemplate with complacency or composure 
admonitions of stoicism in the loss of a boon more 
priceless than wealth, and at the same time display 
no envy when fortune distributes her rewards without 
regard to the share of labor in producing its bounties. 
I shall agree with the secularist with some quali- 
fications. I accept the ethical maxim that my duties 
are found right in the environment in which I am 
placed. I cannot regulate my concrete duties by ends 
of which I know nothing definite. The absorption of 
the middle ages in the other world which they could 
only imagine was fraught with untold errors and 
disastrous consequences. But this neither excludes a 
legitimate place for such a world in our ideals, if 
we rationalise its relation to the present, nor forbids 
a place for it in the actual qualification of morality. 
All that a future life does in ethical conduct is to 
lengthen the time considerations for duty and multi- 
ply the conditions under which moral law is impera- 
tive. Our duties may lie, as I think they do, right 
in the present environment, but this does not prevent 
them from being as much determined by the future 
life, if it be a fact, as they are determined by to- 



356 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

morrow or next year. We cannot draw an absolute 
line of distinction to indicate when morality ceases to 
command, if we continue to exist and to retain our 
identity beyond the limits of bodily existence. Our 
physical duties may lapse but our moral never, except 
with annihilation. The very essence of moral law in 
our physical life is that which looks farthest ahead. 
The man who lives only for today is irrational and 
may be a criminal. He who does not look to the 
morrow is at least imprudent ; and yet the talk about 
our morality being determined by the present may as 
well apply to the present hour or minute as to the 
whole of the present life. Indeed it is in a measure 
true that we have duties referring only to the present 
moment or hour and that do not extend beyond the 
moment. But there are also duties that have to keep 
an outlook on the future of the present life and to 
reckon with the lapse of time while conditions remain 
the same. The highest prudence and the highest vir- 
tues are connected with this previsional spirit and 
motive. It therefore only awaits the proof of a fu- 
ture life to make it actually imperative to take it 
into the scope of our moral law. The retention of 
personal identity after death implies the same moral 
nature and would carry with it the same connection 
of virtue and vice with such a being as we should 
find in its intellectual qualities. We are, of course, 
not to live only for that future, but to apply the 
moral law in the present so that its effects will not 
conflict with the larger outlook that the cosmos may 
provide. But we cannot limit morality and its mean- 
ing to the present unless we deny the fact of survival 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 357 

after death. We should have to deny the validity of 
the moral law altogether and to consider only the in- 
terest of the present moment in all our action, neglect- 
ful of the permanent facts in nature which determine 
duties of an equally permanent sort. 

But I may be told correctly enough that I have no 
duties where I have no knowledge, and perhaps in- 
correctly that I have no knowledge of the life which 
is here supposed to affect morality. The appeal will 
be made to the silence of nature on the existence of 
a future world and life. But this silence is an imag- 
inary fact, if the work of psychic research is to be 
accredited with any evidential value, and it is ap- 
parently only a small modicum of phenomena better 
attested than the immense quantities of it pervading 
history. I must wholly deny from my standpoint 
the absolute silence of nature on the matter. The 
silence is on the part of those who are wilfully ignor- 
ant of the facts in the case. The residual phenomena 
of human experience have been neglected and their 
significance ignored. The blame must not be shift- 
ed upon nature, but upon the pride and stupidity of 
the respectable classes. They fought Copernican 
astronomy, Newtonian gravitation, Darwinism, the 
existence of meteors, and hypnotism. Then when 
they were proved they appropriated them as their own 
and made it the mark of intelligence to believe 
them. The more the respectable change the more 
they remain the same. They will pass through the 
same development in psychic research and when sur- 
vival after death is proved in spite of social ostracism 
it will be the respectable thing to believe and to 



358 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

teach. But the plea of nature's silence on the matter 
cannot be made beyond the point that its revela- 
tion on the subject is not so clear as that of the bodily 
life. Moreover it is true that knowledge is excluded 
to that extent which makes any definite conception 
of a transcendental life at present impossible or im- 
probable, and just to that extent the obligations of 
morality are unrelated to it. But ethics can well 
admit that the whole of our morality as based upon 
a physical environment is limited to the present, and 
yet contend that there is an inner life of the " spirit " 
or mind that has its value for the present and for the 
future as well, if that future can even be conjectured. 
But after all this is not the point at which the 
belief in a future life touches the problem of ethics. 
Its relation to morality depends upon very different 
considerations. The question is not always what con- 
stitutes the moral law, but what means have we for 
making it effective. What motives have we for in- 
ducing men to act according to this law or ideal ? All 
action is based upon some end to be attained, and the 
more consonant it is with the more permanent laws 
of the world the more imperative it usually is. We 
always work for rewards, be they good or bad. We 
may not call them rewards, but if we do not it is 
because we limit the meaning of the term. But as 
every act has consequences we have to take them into 
account, and it will be only a question whether we are 
aiming at those consequences consciously to decide the 
matter of calling them rewards. These consequences 
aimed at are ideals of some kind. The most impor- 
tant of these ideals are those which look to remote 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 359 

ends. There are occasions when a nearer end is so 
imperative that it cannot be sacrificed, but this will 
not interfere with the constant pursuit of the remoter 
end, which may only be temporarily sacrificed. But 
aside from explanations and qualifications our ideals 
are not only or always of merely present rewards 
but also remotely future rewards. Or if rewards is 
an invidious term, as the mediaeval theory of respon- 
sibility has made it, consequences may be substituted 
in its stead. That is, we work for remote future ends 
quite as necessarily as for the present, and those ends 
will be rational precisely in proportion to their moral 
ideality on the one hand and to the measure of our 
knowledge on the other. This is as true in the eco- 
nomic as it is in the ethical world. 

The one question to answer after this is that which 
asks for the relative value of consciousness in the 
world of existence. There are always two things that 
interest us. They are external reality and our inner 
life, matter and consciousness. When pressed to its 
ultimate meaning even matter interests us for its ef- 
fect on consciousness. We do not value the ma- 
terial world for itself, but for its relation to our ideals. 
Every use we make of it is in the interest of some 
pleasure or perfection. It is a means to our ends, 
instead of our ideals being means to matter as an end. 
We assign our states of consciousness a superior 
value in comparison with mere matter. Consequent- 
ly we very naturally raise the question whether the 
order of nature accepts that estimate of the case. 
When theology made matter a created and phenome- 
nal substance, an ephemeral reality coming into exist- 



360 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

ence and passing away at the will of the creator, 
and made spirit the permanent eternal reality, it pro- 
vided a perfectly natural and rational solution of the 
question proposed. But its fundamental difficulty is 
that its evidential support was too weak to enable it 
to stand as defended in earlier times. But its concep- 
tion of the cosmos was a rational one in its main 
outlines, though terribly distorted and abused in its 
applications. It conformed to the estimate which 
every man and woman must place upon the life of 
consciousness, if he acts according to his ineradicable 
instincts at all. These may be summed up in the law 
of self-preservation, which is only a name for the 
preference of a life of consciousness against an inani- 
mate existence. Expanded into the higher ideals this 
law becomes the recognition of superior value of the 
intellectual, the emotional, and volitional functions of 
human nature in science, philosophy, art, religion, 
morality, and politics, as against the vegetative life 
of an animal. Culture, refinement, humanity and 
sympathy, intelligence, high moral aims and enthu- 
siasm, rational religious emotion with its accompani- 
ment of moral passion for the true, the beautiful, and 
the good are all the forms of consciousness that sane, 
rational men exalt beyond the swinish life of " na- 
ture " and mere material comfort. This is assigning 
a value to states of consciousness which is not naturally 
assigned to dead matter, and it is as natural as it is 
rational for ethical natures which so estimate the 
higher ideals of life that they should measure the cos- 
mic order by the standard which their morality im- 
poses upon themselves. They may not be convinced 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 361 

that the cosmic order respects the moral ideals which 
they are compelled to recognise, but they will ap- 
prove or condemn it according as it does or does not 
tend toward the realisation of the moral law, by which 
they feel obliged to regulate their lives. 

The older philosophical and theological views of the 
world gave a metaphysical basis in conformity with 
this interpretation of things. This was based upon 
the permanence of spirit and the transient or phe- 
nomenal nature of matter, the passing away of the 
material universe and the survival of the spiritual. 
But the discovery of the indestructibility of matter 
and the conservation of energy disturbed the com- 
placency of this view, and in fact apparently or really 
reversed our way of looking at things. They showed 
the permanence of the dead material world and its 
mechanical activities, while they showed the apparent 
phenomenal, dependent, and ephemeral nature of the 
world of consciousness. In modern conceptions mat- 
ter and its phenomena of motion, heat, light, and 
electricity, if the latter are material phenomena, are 
permanent and indestructible, while consciousness 
seems to be a transient incident of composition in mat- 
ter. The situation which this creates for the older 
morality is perfectly clear. Materialistic science at 
least apparently shows us that nature appreciates 
dead matter more than it does the permanence and 
superiority of consciousness. All our morality com- 
pels us to estimate consciousness at a higher value 
than dead matter. Have we any obligations to rise 
higher than nature intends we should? Our morality 
says we must regulate even our present lives on the 



362 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

basis of the superior excellence of consciousness and 
its ideals, and we must naturally ask whether nature 
intends to give the same permanence to personality 
that it gives to matter. If it does not it shows that its 
estimate is in favor of the permanence of the less 
important as necessarily conceived in our practical 
morality, and we can hardly expect intelligent men, 
when they discover that nature does not encourage 
the realisation of remoter ideals, to persist in their 
cultivation. They will accept the sensuous view of 
life when they find that the spiritual is not favored by 
the cosmic order. If the materialistic theory be true 
man is not above nature, but its creature, and has 
no obligations which the order of the cosmos does not 
favor. If it makes dead matter the permanent thing 
and consciousness phenomenal and transient we must 
expect human nature not to take any higher concep- 
tion of its duties and ideals. It will not sacrifice its 
present pleasures to an ideal which it is sure will never 
be realised. If morality requires respect for the 
permanent, as we are always told that it does, we must 
expect man to idealise the mechanical world and to 
eschew as inferior the transient world of the spiritual. 
But if he has reason to believe that, after all, nature 
intends to preserve personality quite as fully as it does 
matter and energy it will discover a perfect conform- 
ity between its ethical ideals and the cosmic order. 
Morality will thus be encouraged by the scientific fact 
that nature respects what our ideals oblige us to re- 
spect in our conduct, namely, the superiority and 
deserts of personality. If personality is a mere bub- 
ble on the surface of existence we cannot expect to 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 363 

get men to estimate it as if it were permanent. If it 
is the primary object of the world to develop per- 
sonality and to give it permanence we have a leverage 
on the minds of men to respect it at the estimate 
placed upon it by nature. Otherwise not. They will 
take the good that the material life offers and make 
no sacrifices for a spiritual culture that depends upon 
a future world for its full fruition while the exist- 
ence of that world is denied. The shortcomings and 
failures of our actions to realise our ideals in the 
present will be perfectly tolerable if we can feel that 
nature will still give us a chance to pursue them, but 
if we are assured that the highest developments of 
consciousness and personality are not to be respected 
by the cosmos we are not likely to go on any fool's 
errands. The poor man cannot be expected to cul- 
tivate any high spiritual ideals when he has no prom- 
ise that the next world will give him what the present 
refuses. We can expect nothing but the Epicurean- 
ism in which Greco-Roman civilisation terminated, if 
the higher spiritual ideals of aspiration are to have 
no fruition. But if we can promise that the intel- 
lectual and emotional life of man, as exhibited in its 
best literature and moral activity, can continue its 
pursuits in a spiritual world where we are not tram- 
melled by the limitations and hindrances of sense and 
our physical wants the poor may well be repaid for 
what little indulgence they can give to reflection and 
high aspiration in the present, and the more fortunate 
can have a justification for their ideals which can- 
not be defended as a part of the ultimate end of the 
cosmos on the materialistic philosophy. 



364 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

I am well aware of the follies which might easily be 
aroused by the reinstatement of a belief in a future 
life, if that belief should become as badly abused as 
it has been in the past. But the dangers of abuse 
are no reason for trying to suppress facts. We can- 
not shy at the truth because some unwise people lose 
their heads about it. On the contrary our supreme 
duty is to appropriate that truth and to prevent its 
abuse. We only double our task when we ridicule 
facts until they get beyond our control. Our busi- 
ness is not to follow in the wake of movements we 
cannot control, but to give their truths sobriety and 
sanity. If a future life is a fact we cannot disprove 
it by laughing at phenomena that we do not like. 
Our esthetics have no more to do with the fact than 
they have with the eclipse of the sun or with the exist- 
ence of disease. Emotional contempt of the facts is 
no more legitimate than the condemned emotional in- 
terest in a future life, and if it be a fact we shall 
not escape it by cultivating indifference to its truth. 
It is the business of the intelligent and scientific 
man to command the subject, not to despise it be- 
cause it is not respectable. If nature has thrown 
in our way indubitable evidence of a future life, no 
matter what its character, if there is no escape from 
the admission of the significance of the facts for some 
large theory of the world, it is not only the scandal 
of science that the facts are not incorporated in its 
work, but it is also a reproach to our morals that we 
do not appropriate the facts in some rational and 
useful way. If we cannot deny them we must ar- 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 365 

ticulate them with our rational life and see that they 
get sober instead of insane appreciation. 

There is in the very nature of the facts as recorded 
and the theory necessary to explain them the correc- 
tive of their dangerous use. The conditions under 
which " communications " purport to come from dis- 
carnate souls help to regulate the application of them 
to practical life. The difficulties of " communicat- 
ing " and especially the abnormal mental conditions 
supposed to affect the " communications " show us the 
limits which must be placed upon any revelation of 
the life beyond, to say nothing of the impossibility 
of communicating supersensible experiences in sen- 
sible forms. The probable amnesia affecting the 
" communicator " in regard to both his normal life in 
a supersensible world and in regard to his past earthly 
life shut us out of clear " communications " about the 
past and a rational account of the spiritual world 
until " communications " may become clearer, and 
even then they must always be expressed in analogies. 
We thus seem shut off from the kind of knowledge 
which a morbid curiosity inclines to desire and seek, 
while we have the advantage of proving the fact of 
survival with the probability that the normal condi- 
tion in a supersensible world represents spiritual 
progress of some kind. We do not need to laugh at 
the trivialities, but to use them for curbing the 
insane curiosity and passions of men to peer into se- 
crets which our earthly morality may not require. If 
we can infect life with the belief that consciousness 
survives and that we cannot form an intelligible idea 



366 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

of that survival without many centuries of scientific 
study we may get the combined advantages of the 
Greco-Roman devotion to science and art while we 
sustain Christian hopes and ideals. The mediation 
between the material and the spiritual life may be 
effected in this union. We do not need assurance of 
anything but the fact of a future life if we can accept 
and trust the lesson of evolution, namely, that prog- 
ress is the law of the cosmos. 

One thing in any view of it would be subserved by 
the proof of survival of personality. Nature would 
have been shown to be consistent with the estimation 
which our every day morality has to place on con- 
sciousness and its development in scientific, philo- 
sophic, ethical, political, and religious life. There 
would be no disparity between our moral ideals in our 
present life and the possible realisation of the same 
in a higher degree in another existence. It was this 
apparent disparity which led Immanuel Kant to de- 
mand both immortality and the existence of God to 
satisfy the requirements of the moral law. He found 
duty demanding of men what it was impossible for 
them to realise in their earthly life and recognising 
the validity of that law he thought nature must give 
immortality or abandon the law. The existence of 
God was to him necessitated by the demand for a 
power to adjust the relation between virtue and hap- 
piness which he did not find adjusted in the present. 
I shall not defend the accuracy of Kant's doctrine, 
as I am not quoting it for its truth, but for its 
philosophic respectability, and if this school can ap- 
preciate and respect the demands of the moral law on 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 367 

the consistency of the cosmos there should be no hesi- 
tation on the part of intelligent men in an investiga- 
tion which might lead to the establishment of that 
consistency in fact. A doctrine which " Hegel be- 
lieved, which Kant half believed, and about which Sir 
William Hamilton was curious," according to the au- 
thority of Mr. Andrew Lang, namely, spirit communi- 
cation, ought not to tax the patience of their admirers 
and followers. 

But I must close somewhere, and I know no more 
fitting language with which to terminate this brief 
discussion than that with which Mr. Frederic W. H. 
Myers ends his great work on Human Personality. 
He says : 

" I need not here describe at length the deep dis- 
quiet of our time. Never, perhaps, did man's spir- 
itual satisfaction bear a smaller proportion to his 
needs. The old-world sustenance, however earnestly 
administered, is too unsubstantial for the modern 
cravings. And thus through our civilised societies 
two conflicting currents run. On the one hand health, 
intelligence, morality, — all such boons as the steady 
progress of planetary evolution can win for man, — 
are being achieved in increasing measure. On the 
other hand this very sanity, this very prosperity, do 
but bring out in stronger relief the underlying Welt- 
Schmerz, the decline of any real belief in the dignity, 
the meaning, the endlessness of life. 

" There are many, of course, who readily accept 
this limitation of view ; who are willing to let earthly 
activities and pleasures gradually dissipate and ob- 
scure the larger hope. But others cannot thus be 



368 SCIENCE AND A FUTURE LIFE 

easily satisfied. They rather resemble children who 
are growing too old for their games ; — whose amuse- 
ment sinks into indifference and discontent for which 
the fitting remedy is an initiation into the serious 
work of men. 

" A similar crisis has passed over Europe once be- 
fore. There came a time when the joyful naivete, 
the unquestioning impulse of the early world had 
passed away; when the worship of Greeks no more 
was beauty, nor the religion of Romans Rome. Alex- 
andrian decadence, Byzantine despair, found utter- 
ance in many an epigram which might have been 
written today. Then came a great uprush or incur- 
sion from the spiritual world, and with new races 
and new ideals Europe regained its youth. 

" The unique effect of that great Christian impulse 
begins, perhaps, to wear away. But more grace may 
yet be attainable from the region whence that grace 
came. Our age's restlessness, as I believe, is the rest- 
lessness not of senility but of adolescence. 

" What the age needs is not an abandonment of 
effort, but an increase ; the time is ripe for a study of 
unseen things as strenuous and sincere as that which 
Science has made familiar for the problems of earth. 
For now the scientific instinct, — so newly developed 
in mankind, — seems likely to spread until it becomes 
as dominant as was in time past the religious; and if 
there be the narrowest chink through which man can 
look forth from his planetary cage, our descendants 
will not leave that chink neglected or unwidened. 
The scheme of knowledge which can commend itself 
to such seekers must be a scheme which, while it 



ETHICAL MEANING AND RESULTS 369 

transcends our present knowledge, steadily continues 
it ; a scheme not catastrophic, but evolutionary ; not 
promulgated and closed in a moment, but gradually 
unfolding itself to progressive inquiry. 

" It may be that for some generations to come 
the truest faith will lie in the patient attempt to 
unravel from confused phenomena some trace of the 
supernal world ; — to find thus at last ' the substance 
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' ' : 

If the ideal is worth tolerating in philosophic re- 
flection at all the possibility of proving it by facts 
ought to be respected when any phenomena offer the 
opportunity or the hope of it, and the age which has 
exhausted its resources to study the origin of man 
might find it quite as respectable to examine into his 
destiny. Even our aristocracy has become recon- 
ciled to a simian ancestry, and why does it take such 
offense when we hint that evolution may not termi- 
nate in a fiasco, unless it is afraid of the humility 
which the cosmic order may visit upon it for its pride 
and arrogance. 



INDEX 



Abercromby, Blanche, 67. 
Aksakof, 65. 
Apparitions, 41—65, 99. 
Aristotle, VII. 

Balfour, Arthur J., 16. 

Baldwin, Prof. James Mark, 210. 

Barrett, Prof. VV. F., 16, 27, 70, 

118. 
Blavatsky, Madame, 70, 116. 
Blodgett, Mrs., 187, 189-193. 
Bourget, Paul, 208. 
Bramwell, Dr. Milne, 16. 
Briggs, Mr., 203. 
Brougham, Lord, 11, 47, 48. 
Bute, Marquis of, 16, 54. 

Cahagnet, 13. 

Carpenter, Prof. J. Estlin, 53, 

208. 
Christianity, 3-5, 342, 346. 
Cicero, 4. 

Clarke, James Freeman, 208. 
Consciousness, Unity of, 268. 
Cooper, Dr. Joseph, 281. 
Crawford, Harper, 222, 230. 
Crookes, Sir William, 16. 

Dante, 6. 

Darwin, 6, 11, 53. 

Davey, S. J., 70. 

Davis, Andrew Jackson, 13. 

Descartes, 6. 

Dessoir, Max, 11, 28. 

Doctor, 129, 274. 

Dramatic play of personality, 273. 

Edmunds, Judge, 13. 
Edmunds, Miss, 183, 184. 
Epicurus, 4, 74, 78. 
Ermacora, Dr., 65. 
Ether, 82. 

Ferrier, Dr., 54. 
Fiske, John, 88. 
Fraud, 101, 246-248. 
Future Life, 77. 

Gibbon, 349. 

Gonner, Mr., 135, 137. 

Goodrich-Freer (Miss X.), 54, 

159-162. 
Greek Philosophy, 74, 78, 341. 
Gurner, Mr., 18, 57. 
Guthrie, Malcom, 25, 26, 28. 



Hart, John, 194-197, 207, 324. 

Hegel, VII, 45, 367. 

Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 16, 63, 

70, 71, 116, 124, 126-128, 162, 
165, 166, 172-178, 182, 190, 
194-204, 207, 211, 212, 214, 
231, 264, 275, 276, 324, 328. 

Hutton, Richard, 16. 
Hyslop, Robert, 216-225. 

Imperator, 129, 130, 214, 274, 
278, 301, 315. 

James, Prof. William, 113-116, 

162, 179, 189, 190, 208, 292. 
Jenner, Sir William, 49. 
Johnson, Miss Alice, 30, 71, 164. 

Kant, VIII, 14, 366, 367. 
Keulemans, Mr., 52, 53. 

Lang, Andrew, 11, 44, 50, 64, 

367. 
Langley, Prof. S. P., 16. 
Leaf, Mr. Walter, 118, 149, 151. 
Liebeault, Dr., 62. 
Lodge, Sir Oliver, 16, 80, 118, 

119, 135, 138-149, 151. 

Mabire, M. J. E., 29. 
Macalister, Prof., 163. 
Machines, 108. 
Marillier, Leon, 71. 
Materialism, 78, 85-94. 
McClellan, James, 226. 
McClellan, John, 227. 
McCreery sisters, 24. 
Mediumistic phenomena, 60, 100. 
Mendeleyeff, 81. 
Milton, 6. 

Mistakes and Confusions, 280. 
Mitchell, Dr. Weir, 51, 210. 
Morison, James Cotter, 53. 
Moses, Rev. Stainton, 14, 15, 16, 

65, 66, 67. 128, 129, 274. 
Myers, Frederic W. H., 15, 16, 

18, 19, 44, 45, 51, 62, 63, 66, 

71, 118, 122, 154, 162, 253, 329, 
367. 

Neo-Platonists, 4. 

Newbold, Prof., 203. 

Newton, 6. 

Nichols, Prof. Herbert, 208. 

Norton, Prof. Charles Eliot, 210. 



371 



372 



INDEX 



Osier, Dr. William, 89, 340. 

Pelham, George, 127-128, 130, 
132, 265, 274-278, 314, 325, 
333. 

Personality, Dramatic play of, 273. 

Personality, Secondary, 102-104. 

Pierce, Prof., 209. 

Pindar, 4. 

Piper, Mrs., 113-133. 

Plato, 78, 79. 

Podmore, Mr. Frank, 13, 14, 18, 
19, 45. 

Prince, Dr. Morton, 71. 

Rayleigh, Lord, 16. 

Rector, 129, 214, 274, 275, 276, 

. 278, 323. 

Reformation, 5. 

Reichenbach, 17. 

Religion, 73. 

Renaissance, 5, 344. 

Richet, Prof. Charles, 16, 28, 161. 

Ripon, Bishop of, 16. 

Roentgen Rays, 81. 

Romanes, G. J., 11, 49. 

Sage, M., VII. 

Savage, Dr. Minot J., 54, 181, 

182 
Savag'e, W. H., 181, 182. 
Schmoll, M. A., 29. 
Secondary personality, 102—104. 
Seneca, 4. 
Sidgwick, Mrs. Henry, 70, 71. 



Sidgwick, Prof. Henry, 15, 29, 

30, 71, 118, 164. 
Sidis, Dr. Boris, 284. 
Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 349, 353. 
Socrates, 4, 8, 9. 
Speer, Dr., 14, 67. 
Spinoza, 6. 

Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 42, 43, 82. 
Spiritualism, 41. 
Stewart, Prof. Balfour, 16. 
Stoics, 4. 

Stout, Prof., 34, 253. 
Supersensible world, 78-85. 
Sutton, Mrs. Catherine Paine, 207, 

208. 
Symonds, John Addington, 50. 

Telepathy, 22, 33-41, 104, 111, 

245-166, 294. 
Thaw, Dr. A. Blair, 29, 206. 
Thompson, Prof. J. J., 16. 
Triviality, 260, 298-303. 
Trowbridge, Prof. J. T., 210. 
Tuke, Dr. Hack, 54. 

Underwood, Mr. B. F., 65. 
Unity of Consciousness, 268. 

Vance, Mr., 196. 

Verrall, Mrs., 150, 151, 156. 



W- 



-, Miss, 166-172. 



Wedgewood, Mr. Hensleigh, 16, 

53, 62. 
Wild, Miss Hannah, 189-193. 
Witchcraft, 10. 



3350 



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